I Dare You to Try and Open This...

I recently had the misfortune of having to supermarket shop with my children.  I would rather eat sheet rock for a week than go food shopping.  I find nothing about it enjoyable.  I freeze my tail off in the milk aisle.  I never find the right end of the fruit bag to open -- it's always a fight.  One egg is always shattered and secretly oozing.  I am usually behind someone buying cold-cuts for the entire high school football team at the deli and without fail, I get the cart with the bum wheel that requires Andre The Giant like force to move up and down the aisles.  I also always pick the check out line that moves as efficiently as check-in at the Delta terminal at JFK.  It doesn't.  Dragging my off spring along with me on my journey to Hades is literally Hell.

So I did what any great parent does:  I took them to the candy and toy aisle and said, "pick out a treat and once we are back in the car, you may open it."  Chad found nothing he liked and was pretty much okay with it.  This is, after all, my child who handed me his navy blue velcro wallet with his $74.00 life's savings in it and asked me to send it to Haiti to help victims after the devastating earthquake of a few years back.

Both girls picked out Barbies.  I speed shopped.  Skipped the Deli.  Sent Chad to the milk aisle.  Fruit and vegetables went into the cart commando style.  Picked the wrong line to check out on and then hauled ass to my car.

I made the girls wait until we got home to open their Barbies because I am so smart and I was not yet recovered from my pugilistic food shop.  I also knew that there was no way, ever, that I was going to easily get those Barbies out of their fortress like packaging.  Break into Fort Knox, I guarantee you it will be easier.

Want to rip every newly manicured nail off each finger?  Open a kids toy.  Really want to be stupid?  Try to use your teeth to rip open the plastic packaging.  The only thing you'll open is a space where you tore your molar out.   Want to give yourself the meanest plastic cut?  Use your fingers on the joint of a plastic packaged kids toy.

Got the plastic off?  Good luck dealing with all the microscopic rubber bands, staples, prison wires and sheet metal holding your anxious child's toy tight in its sarcophagus.  I relish getting the points of the twisty metal wire under my finger nails where they expertly separate my nail from its skin.  I'd also like to thank the genius whose brilliant idea it was to put a plastic attachment inside each Barbie head and then attach it to the packaging?  Her head?  Come on folks.  Have the toy companies not gone completely safety and theft proof crazy?  Is there such a thing as too secure?  Do little girls try to swallow Barbie heads while they are still in their packaging?  I mean, really, if four grandparents, two parents and one jaws-of-life metal cutter can't free the damn toy, maybe, just maybe its overkill?

Want to really know what it feels like to suffer under the watchful eyes of your children?  Buy, open and assemble a Barbie Dream House under pressure.  I promise you, eat dirt, it's easier, faster and makes more sense.  Opening and assembling the Barbie Dream House or the Barbie Nightmare took one CIO, one mom and one MBA.  Time spent:  3.5 hours.  Moments of joy:  zero.  Want to utter every curse word in your lexicon in front of your kids, despite promising yourself you'll never potty mouth in their presence?  I dare you -- buy a Barbie Dream House.

Remi once got so angry on the way home from the toy store because I made the mistake of telling her she may open her toy NOW instead of waiting until we arrived home.  Sadistic on some level, I know.  She lathered herself into such a rage when she couldn't get it opened.  Her ire only intensified when I was unwilling to free her toy while I was driving.  Her tirade got so wild and so over the top that her anger morphed from the toy to me.  "You're so not fair!" she taunted me.  "A good mom would know how to drive and open a toy at the same time, I'm not living with you anymore.  Leave me at the curb when we get home.  I'm up for adoption."  Good I thought and take that toy with you to your new home.