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Friday, May 11, 2007

The "I Said Doll" Deluxe

A while ago I posted my million dollar idea: The I Said Doll. Based on today and my cumulative life experience as a parent, I will be coming out with the I Said Doll Deluxe. So where did this epiphany come from?

I'm test driving a car for a couple weeks for Parent Bloggers. This car is very nice and has a lot of cool features. As I was putting OS in his carseat this afternoon, he put his feet on the back of the driver's seat, and we had the following conversation:

AE: Please get your feet off the seat.
OS: (Chattering about a million other things including the fear that YS wanted to take his "hair" aka ratty dish towel. While that probably was true in general, YS at that point was busy looking around the car.)
AE: OS, get your feet off the seat. Please ("please" is said through gritted teeth.)
OS: (Proceeds to wipe his feet on the back of the seat. More chattering about who knows what.)
AE: (Gets in front of him so that OS has to look at her.) I said please get your feet off of the seat.
OS: O.K., Mommy.
AE: Thank you (channeling all energy into trying to be calm and collected.)

That's when I realized that if new cars are going to have all these fabulous new features, particularly digital features, then they need an I Said Doll Deluxe built into the back of the driver's seat. So what exactly is that? Why it's a small TV screen of course. Parents will have the option of recording and customizing a video so that they look their best (whether that means put together, stern, or calm). Then they record a whole bunch of messages to automatically be played to their child when they do annoying things in the car. The car will be wired appropriately. So for example when OS reaches across the empty middle seat to poke YS, a trigger will be set off so that the Alex image comes on looking great and says "I said please leave your brother alone." Likewise when the back of the seat gets kicked, it will say "I said please get your feet off of the seat." There will also be times where I will feel like saying something wittier like "I'm supposed to be test driving this car not testing how easy it is to clean. Thank you."

The nice thing is that since it is a recording, I only have to be polite, calm and collected once: the time I record it. After that even though I may fuming in the front seat thinking about driving with my head out of the window, my calm and caring voice will still fill the car with lots of pleases and thank yous.

A. Elliott's Lesson Learned: I said, "Tell the chinchilla to leave the dog alone, please. Thank you."

Labels: Humor (at least Attempted)

posted by Alex Elliot @ 9:34 PM 0 comments

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Name:	Alex Elliot
Home:	MA, United States
About Me:	Professional Mom of two cats, a dog, an ant farm, and oh yeah...two boys: a 5 year old and a 3 year old. Also found in my house is my husband who is known on this blog as The Big Giraffe.
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