At one point on Christmas Day, I was watching a six-year-old maneuver a remote-controlled racecar through a set of Zoomtubes (like the old Habitrail hamster tubes). In front of the track was a battery-operated vortex (like the old Lava Lamps) that changed color every few seconds. Three battery-operated Christmas figurines would start shimmying and singing every time the little car passed them: I am not sure how many times I heard "Ice Ice Baby" in the space of a few hours.
Meanwhile, the racecar driver's little sister, dressed in a pink tutu, was holding her talking Fancy Nancy doll and pirouetting to a Nutcracker tune played on a music box inside a ceramic gingerbread house. The lights on the roof blinked in time. You guessed it: doll and music box were battery-operated.
Jokingly, I asked the parents if they have a dedicated storage drawer for batteries. As it turns out, they do, and it also contains little screwdrivers.
"Pretty much everything in our house runs on batteries," acknowledged the dad. He shops for the best price on Amazon and buys them in bulk.
"We're talking multiple times a year," added the mom.
The merry cacaphony reminded another family member of his parents' house. They are clock collectors and deliberately stagger the times so that the chimes sound consecutively throughout the house.
"It goes on for like 20 minutes," he said. "Drives me crazy!"
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