So we were at the grocery store last night doing the Team Family shopping thing.  I had Ethan and Ben with me.  This time Ben was the only one in the cart and Ethan was being very good leading the way and helping me get things.  When we were all done they asked if we could stop at the Halloween display where all the motion detecting noisy decorations are.  They’d been real good during the shopping trip so sure, they earned a fun pit stop.

The large skeleton that sings Super Freak was no longer there so we went over by the candy dishes with hands that try to grab you when you reach in.  Some employee was smart enough to turn the front row backwards so they stopped going off whenever people walked by so I told Ethan to reach in to set them off.  At this point I got Ben out so he could join in.

Then they discovered the small skeltons that sing when you press a button. My first reaction was “Oh no, my kids are making noise, I should stop them.”  Then it hit me … maybe it was from the interview Manic Mommies had with Jane Porter, author of Odd Mom Out… why was my first reaction to be apologetic and stop my kids?  This isn’t a library and these stores put the noisy annoying stuff out in reach of kids on purpose.  Maybe its time for a little revenge.

I proceded to encourage and help Ethan and Ben to press the button of every single skeleton in succession…all 20 of them…and the next few winters were a chaotic cacophony of overlapping hit songs from the last 20 years sung by foot tall animatronic seasonal decorations.  The sky didn’t fall.  The police weren’t called.  People walking by who had puzzled expressions on their faces looking for the source of the racket saw how much fun we were having and laughed along with us.

I’m sure there could have been people who would have looked at us disapprovingly, but you know what?  Anyone who can’t find the humor in a spontaneous, harmless stunt that brings laughter to a pair of kids and their dad aren’t the kind of people I want approval from anyway.  Something else I realized … these displays are always there to lure spontaneous purchases and the kids are always drawn to them.  Let them play with them.  Let them set them all off at once.  Owning ONE will NEVER compare to the fun you can have in the store with 20 of them!

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