A Gift Given
Did you ever have that grandparent, aunt, or uncle that every birthday or holiday event gave you a present that made noise? You know what I mean. It was that toy fire truck, that when you pushed a certain button a siren would go off. Or that device that had a spinning wheel on it that could point to an animal or letter of the alphabet to teach you something and all you had to do was pull on the string attached to it and let it go to hear it tell you what you had just pointed to. Maybe it was that Jack-in-the-Box, that when you cranked the handle it would play the tune “All Around the Mulberry Bush” before Jack popped out of the box.
And you loved that gift. You loved it so much that you played with it over and over and over again. And shared all those beautiful sounds with your family…over and over and over again. You had no idea how much of that repeated noise was engraining itself deep within the battered brains of your parents, sisters, or brothers.
Did you ever have that kind of gift-giving person in your life?
I’m not sure what prompts those people to do such a thing to a member of their own family. But I do have a theory. Revenge! You see when the parents of the gift recipient become grandparents or uncles and aunts, it’s only reasonable to assume that it is payback time. Time to share the earworms* they had to suffer through with others. And who best to share it with, but family.
The other possible reason might be that it is a rite of passage. There is some biological need for you at a certain age, to pass on to children, a new way that they can annoy their parents with some sort of mechanical, instrumental, or electronic device. I would guess that this rite of passage is unknown and undocumented, and you may not even realize why you are doing it. In fact, you might have good intentions and a real purpose for sharing said gift, even realizing that it might be an annoyance at home.
It was December 1983. I was teaching an inter-age 4th and 5th-grade class. I was really into folk music at the time. Each year, near Christmas time I would give a small gift to the students I was teaching. Usually, it was pens or pencils and an occasional Homework Pass (This was a piece of paper that they could turn in at any time of the year, to be excused from a non-long term project or assignment.). This year would be different. As I said I was into folk music and in particular folk instruments…silly ones. So this year I gave each student
a nose flute 
and a kazoo 
.
Nose flutes (sometimes referred to as humanatones) produce sound by blowing air through your nose while your mouth does whatever the inside of your mouth (tongue and the roof of your mouth) does when you whistle a tune. The kazoos on the other hand only require you to hum a tune making sure that all the air you expel is coming through your mouth.
Though each instrument will play a melodic tune, as long as you can hum or whistle a tune, the quality of the sound over time can become annoyingly earwormish.
My intentions were good, and the kids loved the gifts. It took a while to teach my students how to play their nose flutes. It’s almost impossible if your nose is stuffed up. They were specifically told not to share their nose flutes or kazoos with others for health reasons. However, no restrictions were given as to when they could use their gifts. I timed the giving of the gifts towards the end of the day on the last day of school before vacation.
I did receive some input from my students, when they returned from the holiday break, that some of their parents were not quite thrilled with the gifts I had shared. But what could I say…it was a rite of passage for me.
In 1983, I was not married, and though I was an uncle, I did not have the experience of having a child of my own with a noise-making device given by a relative. That, in fact, did not happen until I got married, had a child, some ten years later, and had to live through the gifts that my sisters gave to them. But I did get my revenge when my sisters’ kids grew up and had families of their own, and I was the “granduncle”. I mean, someone had to keep the tradition going.
*earworm – a catchy song or tune that runs continually through a person’s mind.
