Stupid things that I have bought

In a rare moment of uncharacteristic consistency, here's the followup and matching counterpart to a previous post where I discussed the various foolish things my wife has wasted our hard-earned cash on. This time, as promised, why don't we examine a few ill thought-out purchases of my own?

1) A Curious George bathtime bubble-blower.
This was a present for our youngest this past Christmas. She is not really one for communicating her hobbies and interests, so you have to kind of extrapolate from observed behaviour. On that premise, her hobbies seem to consist of casual violence and wanton destruction, and much as I am sure she would appreciate a claw hammer and big bag of marbles for throwing, they did seem somewhat inappropriate for a two-year old. But she has also been known to sit still for literally minutes on end while the Curious George DVD is playing, so a 'bubble blowing' bathtime doll of her favourite cartoon monkey seemed a good bet.
I could not have been more wrong: she loathes it.
The Curious George bubble-blower is a foot-high plastic monkey that you can take into the bath. When filled with bubble mixture, he blows bubbles when squeezed - at least, that is what he is supposed to do. However, in practise, what he actually does when squeezed is puke a sickly white foam out of his mouth, like the last shuddering death throes of a rabid dog. His chest cavity then wheezes dramatically as it sucks in air, which is very unsettling. Couple that with the fact that he has a horrible 'skin-like' rubbery surface and the cold dead eyes of a serial killer and you have the stuff of childhood nightmares - and that's before you consider that, in order to fill him with bubble mixture in the first place, you have to open a slot in the back of his head and inject it into his cranium using a special syringe specifically supplied for this purpose, like a kind of 'My first vivisection' doll.
She screams when she sees it. An epic failure on many levels, although I think my purchase is not quite as large a failing as whoever commissioned it in the first place and then subsequently greenlit production. Here's a handy tip for any toy manufacturers reading this: any child's toy that requires you to insert a syringe into a monkey's head is almost certainly in need of a rethink.

2) An umbrella from Poundland
Yes, yes, I know; I was asking for it. It's the pound shop, right? They only sell things for a pound. Even before the world economy came crashing down and sterling went into freefall, you couldn't buy much for a pound. And there's so much that can go wrong with a cheap umbrella: it can fail to deploy, the spindles can break, the fabric can tear: it's very clearly an unwise object to only spend a pound on. And yet, here's my defence: it was raining, and I didn't have an umbrella - but I did have a pound. And I only needed it to last for 30 minutes.
It lasted twenty. Then a sudden gust of wind not only blew it inside out, but blew all the fabric clean off the frame, which whirled away like a giant bat - leaving me forlornly holding an umbrella skeleton in a torrential downpour, much to the amusement of a whole busload of passing commuters.

3) Battery operated toothbrushes.
I buy them, at great expense. I successfully clean my teeth with them that night, and the following morning. Then, while I am work the next day, my youngest daughter picks them up, turns them on, and leaves them in bath, because she likes the buzzing noise that makes. When I get home that night that batteries are flat, and I find that I am left with what is effectively a standard toothbrush that I have paid 6-7 times over the odds for.

4) Mister Kart.
My wife maintains this is indicative of just how little I actually understand her, and still cites it now, over a decade later, as an example of how crass I am. I still maintain this was a sound purchase and that she needs to get over herself. Why don't you be the judge?
There was a time, before I wore down her defences though an intensive programme of unsubtle psychological attrition, when my wife was 'just' my girlfriend (I hope this lays to rest the scandalous rumour that the only reason she is married to me is that she was purchased over the Internet). Back then, I used to make a bit more effort and try to go out of my way to impress her, which I now realise was a cruel mistake, because all I did was set her expectations waaaaay too high, and she has been on a downer ever since. But during that time (what she would describe as "the golden days", when I was prepared to suppress my farts in her presence and to at least pretend to be prepared to talk about 'feelings') she lived in London, and worked as a fashion textile designer. When she visited me at weekends she would often bring work back with her, which meant my dining room soon started to fill up with paint, pastels, sketches of flowers, etc. This artistic detritus began to interfere with my own usage of the room during the week (largely the storage of pizza boxes and the long term collection of dust) so, in a moment of shining altruism, I decide to invest in a storage solution for it all.
"What's this?" she asked, looking horrified when she saw it.
"That is Mister Kart" I explained, pointing to where the name had been injection-moulded into the black, shiny polypropylene surface in a distant Chinese sweatshop.
"I see. And what is Mister Kart for, exactly?"
"He is a three-drawer storage solution, useful for..." I began.
"Mister Kart," she interrupted icily, "is a plastic vegetable rack. For keeping potatoes and carrots in."
"That is just one suggested usage. Mister Kart is versatile. Mister Kart, can also, for example, be used to store paintbrushes. Or pastels. Or..."
"That is the ugliest, cheapest piece of shit I have ever seen in my life, and if you think I am storing my art supplies in it, you are mental."
A short pause.
"I bought if for you," I explained, slightly hurt. "It's a gift."
"You don't understand me at all, do you?"
A much lengthier pause. In retrospect, it was a key moment in our relationship. I suspect, had I played things differently, that I would not now be married with kids.
"You don't have to use it." I said weakly.
When we moved out of the house, some two years later, I found the still unused Mister Kart under the stairs. I went to put it on the removal van, but my new wife gave me a look like thunder and so I left it in the kitchen for the new house owners. I hope they loved and appreciated it more than the woman it was bought for....

More seasonal retail misery

(A belated post, started some weeks ago, but only finished now)

What with the Christmas shopping, and then the January Sales, I've recently had plenty of opportunity (much as I did about this time last year), to remind myself just how hateful the retail experience can be. This time around, my children are bigger, more aware of what's going on, and hence more vocal about their own feelings on the process. These feelings appear to be crystallised: when looking at Barbie Princess dolls they are very much pro the modern commercial Christmas, whereas whilst shopping for anything else they whine incessantly without pausing to draw breath. My soundtrack for the 2008/2009 Yuletide Retail Hellhole Experience would be the endless looped repetition of Christmas music but with the lyrics drowned out by children howling atonally that they are tired/hungry/have done a poo.
Our Christmas 'big food shop' (AKA "let's give Tesco all of our hard-earned money for way too much food that we won't eat and will ultimately throw away") warrants further discussion, starting with the truly bizarre idea my wife had about it: she thought it would be 'fun'.
"Fun?" I asked, genuinely taken aback. "Fun?"
"Yes - fun. If you let it, it could be fun. You know - picking out special treats, getting caught up in the festive mood..."
"Ugh. It won't be fun. It will be Hell, only with boxes of dates and tins and Quality Street.."
Of course, it wasn't fun. It was dire. Shopping in supermarket is always dire, but during the holidays it's far, far worse: not only are the stores crammed to capacity, but many of the extra seasonal visitors are people like me, who have been dragged there against there will. This means the crowds are not only unusually large, but also overly resentful - and it only takes a small incident, like somebody else picking up the bag of satsumas that you had your eye on, for things to turn really ugly...
My own experience was not improved by my youngest daughter, who discovered that when seated in the child seat at the front of a trolley that I was pushing, she could easily reach up and gather in her tiny fist both of the drawstrings for the hood on my sweatshirt. She could then suddenly tug hard on these, which would collapse the hood into a tight, painful viewing-port centred around my nose. If the drawstrings were then yanked harder, she could physically drag my hooded face down onto the handle of trolley, forcing me into a bent-double position that enabled her to repeatedly kick me in the chest while I flailed blindly at her. She found this hilarious, (as in fact did many onlookers), though it must be said I got tired of it pretty quickly...
When we finally got into the checkout queue and were told that the average waiting time in the line was approaching an hour, all three of us - both of the children and me - turned mutinous. Sensing a possible impending 'incident', my wife sent me and my charges to the cafe to buy a hot drink and a snack, while she stayed and nobly queued. Sadly, this brilliant plan of distraction failed on two counts: firstly the queue at the cafe was so long and slow-moving that my youngest actually fell asleep in the line while sitting on my feet and leaning on my shins, and secondly, just as we had finally sat down with our drinks, my wife appeared looking flustered, to announce that the shopping had all been rung up on the checkout but she has forgotten her credit card, so could I drop everything and come back and pay? Quickly? Only she had noticed that the people in the queue behind her weren't taking the delay that well...
When we got back to checkout, the man waiting in the queue behind us gave me such a filthy look that I felt compelled to draw out the payment process for as long as possible just to spite him: 'forgetting' my PIN for two attempts, changing the card I used at the last minute, suddenly remembering my loyalty card, pointing out a random item that I decided we hadn't actually put in the trolley and asking for it to be taken off the bill - that sort of thing. He looked apoplectic by the end. I was tempted to smile and nod, and wish him a Merry Christmas as we left, but it seemed a bit much...

My little moonchild

'You get the kids your deserve" runs the old adage, but I'm never quite sure what it means.
Does it mean that if you are an exemplary parent, you get exemplary children? Or does it mean that if you were a little bastard as child, then your children will be little bastards as well, as a kind of karmic revenge for your childhood unpleasantness?
Nobody seems too sure on this, which is surprising, because from almost the moment of conception it seems there are no end of people rushing to offer you unrequested advice on how you should bring your children up, what they would do differently (by which, of course, they mean what they would do better) and what your own specific failings as a parent are. Some also seem to think that by having sired offspring of their own, it gives them an insight into your own children that is somehow better than the 24/7 love, care and concern that you yourself provide. (Perhaps the most stunning example of this was the women who came over to me while I was shopping and told me I was mispronouncing my own daughters name - an act of such brazen effrontery that I was lost for words for a few seconds before pointing that actually, no, after some consideration I was pretty sure I'd got it right, what with me being the one who named her and everything...)
But I digress, and here is where all this is leading: my eldest daughter will not stop mooning me. So if you really do 'get the kids you deserve', I think something has gone wrong, because neither interpretation makes sense: I certainly don't lead by example in this regard, and I'm told I was an insular, prudish child who not only kept his bottom in his trousers at all time but did his best to avoid other people all together, preferring instead the company of either a good book or my extensive selection of original Star Wars figures. Why then, when I'm lying on the sofa on a Sunday morning, does my four-year old think it hilarious to take off her pyjamas and block my view of the television almost completely with her backside?
"Don't do that" I say.
"Bottom", she says, just in case I'd missed the point.
"Put it away" I say.
She wiggles it at me. "Bottom" she repeats.
"Bottom" confirms her sister, watching this performance and nodding.
I flail at the offending article with a cushion, but to no avail. I could actually throw cushions, but past experience tells me that (a) she will find this uncontrollably funny and (b) I will run out of spare cushions long before she runs out of spare bottom.
"Bottom" she taunts. "Bottom. Bot-bot."
"If you keep this up," I warn, "I will write about this on the Internet so that all your friends can read about it when you are a teenager."
"Bot-bot. Bottom."
"There will be a boy you like." I say. "And when you bring him round for tea, I shall sit him down with the 2009 archive and ask him to read it out loud while your face burns crimson..."
She waggles her backside again. "Bot-tom. Bottom" she reiterates.
It's clearly time to up the stakes.
"If you do not put your bottom back in your pyjamas, where it belongs," I announce, "then when we go out for lunch today, you cannot have apple juice. You can only have water."
Now, this may sound like the mildest sanction in the world, but the result is immediate. She stops and looks at me carefully, as if to say: You wouldn't dare, so don't go there.
I glare back, trying to say with my eyes: Oh yes, I went there. I just dropped the 'AJ' bomb. Deal with it...
There is stare-off, during which her bottom remains prominently on display. Finally, she reluctantly pulls up her trousers, before casually announcing: "If you do not give me any apple juice, I will catch you on fire."
I am slightly taken aback by this, but decide that rather than it being an early sign of deeply worrying anti-social and pyromaniac tendencies, it has more to do with the fact that she has just watched 'Finlay the Fire Engine' on CBeebies. However, my inner pedant cannot resist further comment.
"Set me on fire," I say. "Not catch me on fire..."
She gives me look of pure disgust. In retrospect, it may have been deserved.
Later, when I tell my wife about the whole sorry episode, she laughs like drain. I point out the her eldest daughter has now developed a tendency for running butt-naked around the house, giggling. My wife laughs even louder. And then I recall her teaching the girls her patented 'Shake your boom-boom' dance, and the way she treats the sight of my own backside, and it all suddenly becomes very clear: every child has two parents, and in this case, I've got the daughter my wife deserves...