Do you want to know the most annoying thing about your kid?

I’ll just tell you before you embarrass yourself by listing all the personal traits your kid inherited from you that drive you insane.

It’s his toys—every blinking, flashing, singing, barking one of them. I’m not talking about the innocent little wooden car with the one squeaky wheel. No. I’m talking about the mammoth stack of battery operated crap you’ve inherited from good Samaritans. It’s the singing, flashing horse; and the blinking, musical aquarium; and the talking, singing race car; and the blinking, singing tablet. And while all these toys make you want to stuff broccoli in your ears to muffle the insanity, there is one that rates highest on the ‘world’s most annoying toys’ list…

Skippy…

Skippy the blinking, flashing, singing, barking hunk of plastic shaped like a dog. Of all the crap we’ve accumulated to beguile The Beast, I hate Skippy the most.

I bet I’ve spent a quarter of my maternity stipend on batteries just to keep Skippy alive. As I begrudgingly put the last round of batteries in Skippy, I found myself trash talking him. That’s when I knew it had to be over. I knew I was done slaving over Skippy and his high maintenance upkeep. Skippy was going to die, and The Beast was going to learn his first hard lesson in grief.

It’s like Skippy knew it was his last hurrah so he made it the longest, slowest, most excruciating death possible. Every morning I woke up and when The Beast pointed to Skippy, I’d say a little prayer and hope today was the day he just wouldn’t turn on. But every day he managed to muster up enough juice to sing his horribly out of tune song, “I love to play and dance around looking for my bo-ne.”

So I devised a plan to help Skippy with this ‘moving on’ process. Instead of picking up The Beast’s toys at the end of the day, I just left them strewn throughout the house. I took out the vacuum and smashed into every one of them in hopes I’d create some sort of short circuit and the toys would die. I smashed Skippy the hardest because he deserved it. Well my plan backfired because when I turned on Skippy, instead of short circuiting to silence, he got stuck in a loop singing, “I love to play and dance around looking for my bo-ne, bo-ne, bo-ne…” The Beast thought this was hilarious and loved Skippy even more. I, on the other hand, found myself shouting, “I HATE YOU SKIPPY. DIE SKIPPY, DIE!”

To poor wine on the wound, (isn’t that how the saying goes?) the electronics staged some sort of Toy Story-esque revolt on me. Lead by Skippy, of course. The other night, all was quiet. The Beast was in bed, and all the toys were safely smashed, I mean stacked, haphazardly in bins and baskets. Then out of nowhere, one stray toy in some dreadfully unorganized basket, started to sing. I ran over and shook the basket to see if I could locate the offender, but the tune was unfamiliar and it had no flashing lights to identify itself. I shook another basket to see if it was in there and another toy turned itself on. I started madly feeling around inside both baskets hoping to locate the miscreants but to no avail. Soon I was sitting amidst my own singing, barking, blinking, flashing toy hell. And you know whose fault it was? SKIPPY’S!

That night, after the cacophony of annoyingness was over, I did it. I took out Skippy’s batteries. I killed Skippy and it felt great.

The Beast still points at him and bashes Skippy’s head to see if he’ll turn on, but each day it’s getting easier and easier for him to accept Skippy’s demise, and he’s learning to let go.

Rest in peace, Skippy. I hope you meet your match in plastic dog heaven. I bet it’s a pure-bred poodle or something. Anyway…enjoy the Arf-ter life.  Haha. Get it?