The Furby Incident
Do you remember the first time you saw a commercial for some doll or truck with an accompanying jingle? Mine was for the California Roller Girl doll.. a little blonde with skates who would scoot across the floor, moving her legs and arms and head.
Her jingle was really what interested me. I mean, who wouldn't want a theme song for themselves? But I couldn't have been more than four. So I whined and begged and pleaded for that doll, and at my birthday party, lo and behold, there she was. switch her on, and stand back... I expected to chase her all around the kitchen, sliding along in my socks, since I couldn't balance on my skates yet.
She waved her arms, kicked her legs, wobbled her oversized blonde head... and promptly fell over.
I was distraut. Here was the epitome of my childhood dreams, and there she lay on the floor.
But if you can't skate, what do you do? I went with my mom to see Starlight Express at the Hilton in Las Vegas, where we were living at the time. For those who don't know, starlight Express is Andrew Lloyd Webber's version of The little engine that could. A broadway style musical, where the entire cast is dressed as trains, and every scene is done on skates.
I came out of it determined to learn to rollerskate, and, as a result, broke my arm in two places at the age of five.
The next toy that I wanted was an Easy Bake Oven. It was this plastic contraption with a heationg lamp inside, and painfully small single serving mixes for cakes and cookies and brownies. It came with a purple stick with a cup at the end for placing the tiny silver baking pans into and removing them from the oven.
It was another birthday gift, and of course needed to be opened and used RIGHT THEN, regardless of the cake sitting in the other room. So, open the packet of brownie mix, add in one of the tiny cups' worth of milk, and a tiny cup's worth of oil, mix, and bake.
Now, despite being marketed for children, the easy bake oven was not, as it said, easy. It did not bake evenly, and it was absolutely possible to burn the edges while the center remained the consistency of pudding. It took just as long to bake a pan the size of a mayonnaise jar lid, as it would to bake a real pan of brownies in the oven-- and the final set back for the serving size was, after a half hour of being extremely patient (for kids), all of your friends wanted a piece of the pie, so to speak. So after divvying it up, everyone got a brownie the size of a Barbie shoe.
And after all of that, and the fear of dropping the pan inside the oven (it only held onto it by the very small lip of the pan), it was still thoroughly possible to burn onesself on it. It might not be easy, might not bake very well, but it was, at least, an oven, and ovens are hot.
So at the age of eight, I convinced my father to teach me to use the big girl oven-- after all, if you made a real pan of brownies, everyone got a piece large enough to coat the bottom half of their face with chocolate, AND still get some into their mouths.
The next, last, and worst of my disappointing toy purchases was something every girl wanted in third grade-- a Furby. A plush doll with a hard plastic base, eyes that would open and close, ears that would flap, and a beak that issued high pitched noises that, on first contact, seemed adorable.
That year, every girl bragged about the new things she'd managed to teach her Furby-- "Mine can nearly sing the alphabet, though it jumbles the letters, sometimes."
"Oh yeah? Mine acts like a second alarm-- after my alarm goes off in the morning, if the lights don't come on within five minutes, my Furby wakes me up again."
I could imagine teaching it to rat out my little brother for stealing cookies, and teaching it to take phone messages, and tell us when someone was at the door. Essentially, I thought a Furby would serve as the perfect subsitute for a puppy in our petless household.
I tried talking my parents into getting me one, but they just traded a glance. My parents had never been big into noisy toys. In fact, they were nearly outlawed. But this was no ordinary noisy toy-- it was a Furby, and I HAD to have it. Months of pleading and dropping what I thought were subtle hints went by, and finally I was allowed. We went on a grand excursion to the store, and couldn't find one in stock ANYWHERE. Eventually, though, as I was getting horribly discouraged, my father took me aside outside a Toys R Us, and revealed to me that he'd found a purple one at the Wal-Mart down the street. Success! We'd found it.
I sat in the backseat of the car, in the dark on the drive home, staring and imagiuning all the joy my new pet would bring... and the great eyes slid closed and open again. I dropped it, uttering a slight shriek. Here it was, still in its plastic package, without batteries in it, and it was moving. It reminded me of the then-terrifying Chucky doll... and I became sure in that instant that it was possessed and out to kill me.
I overcame that fear, though, opening it up, putting the batteries inside, and happily chirping back and forth with it, trying to teach it to say my name, and, failing in that, the words, 'die, jerk, die', though this part was taught in a whisper, lest my parents overhear.
I settled in for bed that night, Furby sitting on my dresser, and closed my eyes, only to hear a faint whistling, which grew louder.
My parents yelled from the other room that I should put it away and go to bed, and I began to fret. I didn't *think* it had an off button, but I knew if you covered the sensor on its forehead, it was supposed to turn off, or at least go to sleep. Which was great-- until you took your thumb away, and the light of the digital clock woke it back up.
Furby talked through the night, though it was tucked firmly into the back of my sock drawer. Somehow, that didn't shut it up, but it did muffle the noise sufficientlhy that my parents didn't get upset. Still, I got no sleep, and wandered into school the next day looking much worse for the wear. My teacher asked what the problem was, and I responded that it was my Furby. She grimaced knowingly, and suggested removing the batteries before bed that night.
I got home and took her suggestion while doing my homework. The batteries were set on the dresser beside the doll, and I ent and did my school work in the kitchen, then went out to play, Furby and its horrors temporarily forgotten. That night, when I got settled into bed, I heard a soft whooshing noise, and sat up, remembering the incident in the car. Little me crept over to the light switch, and flipped it on, only to see Furby sitting on the dresser, batteries still beside it, eyes and beak opening and closing, and from its mouth was the whispered word, 'die'.
That night, I rolled Furby in a towel and locked it in a hard travel trunk that was put in my closet and the door firmly closed. The key to the trunk was placed in the back of the sock drawer, and Furby was forgotten, until we moved, six months later.
My uncle and father were moving my closet's contents down the driveway on a dolly, when the travel case fell off of its perch atop some boxes.
I don't know who unlocked it. I don't know who put new batteries in it. All I know is, when Furby fell out, the sun hit the sensor, and its eyes opened, I ran, screaming in the opposite direction.
I switched to books. I was quite done with toys, thank you VERY much. So much for being a 'normal kid'.