Day 465 - Toy Story

I don't know how many of you recall my story of this farmer puzzle piece that had a wooden knob where his fleshy knob should be, and how Andrew took a liking to the knob in his mouth. If you don't remember, don't worry about it. You're better off than me -- ever since that story, every time I see a knob, I see a penis. Imagine my trepidation at opening doors...

For Christmas, Auntie Anne (pretzel maven) bought the kids this tower of jungle animals. Much like the way Grandma Ichinaga impaled little kids on her Christmas tree, you take these animals and impale them on a palm tree. Each animal makes a cute little sound. The lion rattles. The elephant ears crinkle. The monkey jingles. You know, just like real life.

Here's a picture of the toy:


Cute enough, right? The kids enjoy playing with it too. Emma likes to take the animals and shake them around; Andrew likes to take the animals and throw them to the ground and then step on them and punctuate the entire scenario with a bone-chilling laugh. If it's never too early to think about preschool enrollment, I assume the same goes for therapy?

Now I want to preface that I don't go around looking at things in a perverted way. But take one look at this palm tree without the animals and tell me you don't see what I see:


It's an erect penis! More specifically, I think it might very well be the Jolly Green Giant's ding dong ("Ho ho ho! Giant penis!"). I don't want you to think that I try to figure out which toys resemble genitalia (...although one of Emma's toy purses looks suspiciously like a vah-jay-jay...), but when you see your kids playing with certain toys in a certain way, you can't help but get a little disturbed.

Andrew is still in the phase where he loves to put everything in his mouth. This includes the aforementioned Jolly Green Giant wee-wee. One of the first times when Andrew was playing with this toy, he started to bite the pole all over the place. Lisa, Auntie Anne (pretzel maven), and myself were laughing at him. But this oral fixation on this new toy started to disturb me by the things I inadvertently was saying to Andrew. Things like...

"Andrew, stick it through the hole!"

...or when he was trying to stack an animal unsuccessfully...

"Andrew, you need to make it stiffer!"

Horrifying, I say! Only after the words come out of your mouth do you realize what you've said. At first you're embarrassed. But then you remember your kids don't even understand what you just said. So you try to forget it. But you can't. You get embarrassed again. Then you try to explain yourself, "In no way was I referring to your toy as a gigantic penis." And then you ultimately feel like a dumbass.

I think the best thing for me is to not get embarrassed by these incidents and just laugh. Honestly, the reason why it's so funny is because the kids are so innocent and naive. Once you get past a certain age, all of it changes. And believe me, I know. I was once arrested in Santa Monica for lewd conduct for eating a large pickle. Long story short, I have sensitive teeth.