The Geiger Counter in the Garbage Can
Anyone who has kids has collected it. You know, the cheap toys that somehow always end up in your house even though you make the promise with your wife/husband/significant parakeet that it will never happen. No, you know your kids are better than collecting useless trinkets, unlike the common masses.
So six months later as you are literally shoveling the various happy meal/birthday present/"I-bought-it-with-my-money" crap out the door and into the garage to be hauled away into a landfill (and in the process pissing off a environmentalist...double points!), it's entirely understood that you might hear a variety of noises coming from the bag.
Today was no exception. Yesterday, during the first real day of spring the kids brought out all their usual toys and a few unusual ones. Somehow during last night's cleanup, we missed a few. So as any good parent would do on a cold rainy Monday monring, I sent the kids out to clean up what was left behind. (hey, it's cold out there!)After Tyler came back in with a variety of items (baseball glove, jump rope, small little electronic noisemaker), I told him to put the first two away in the garage and pitch the last one.
Fast forward about 20 minutes. I'm standing in the kitchen trying to get Hannah out the door when all of the sudden I'm flashbacked to college physics when several small bursts of static start raining through the room....
"Dammit, it's AlQueda, they blew up a nuke. You hear that? See it wasn't such a dumb idea to buy a geiger counter and leave it out in the kitchen on all the time for just this situation. Now everyone throw on the lead-lined clothing I bought last month and get the duct tape out."
Well, it didn't happen exactly that way. More along the lines of "What the heck is that noise?" and "Why is the garbage can radioactive?" (nope, no little one in the house yet and besides, the diaper pail is upstairs). A quick survey found a small electronic toy which apparently wasn't quite 100% waterproof. No, it was still functioning, but instead of a variety of noises that usually spout from it, we had flashbacks to "The Manhattan Project". Hannah looked at it rather dejected, but moved on in her usual way and left me to dispose of it.
Too bad I was the only one who thought Geiger Counter....would have been interesting to watch the kids dive for cover from the garbage can.