Everyone knows what little dudes do on Christmas morning: They ignore all the expensive stuff that Santa just brought, and play with old toys they haven’t touched in years. (The littlest dudes prefer to play with the boxes in which the expensive toys came packaged.) Despite the fact that two of my kids are adults, they were no different. Just like they did last year, Kristen and Courtney pulled out Operation, a game that Laura doesn’t care for very much because of the annoying buzzer that goes off when the metal tweezers inadvertently touch the metal sides of the “incision” as you’re removing the various parts from the “patient.”
Kristen and Courtney were all giddy and stuff while playing Operation amidst all of the new stuff strewn about the place, and it reminded me that I'd meant to post about what happened the year before, but I guess I forgot, so I’m doing it now before I forget again. Last year, Adam and I were watching the girls play Operation, and we were listening while they reminisced about old times. They asked me if I remembered another game they once had that was similar to Operation, but they couldn’t remember the name of it. They claimed that it involved removing “boogers,” which were actually gummy-like rubber bands, through the nose of a plastic head, one by one, with a pair of tweezers. According to Kristen and Courtney, who began laughing hysterically as they continued to recall the particulars of this game that they allegedly had, the object of the game was to collect as many “boogers” as possible, but if a player picked the wrong rubber band, then the top of the plastic head blew off.
At that point, Kristen and Courtney were rolling on the floor laughing. Adam and I totally accused them of making up the whole thing. They swore it was a real game, but only added to our doubts because they could not remember the name of it, and they kept laughing and adding new details, such as not only did the top of the plastic guy’s head blow off, but come to think of it, his brain came flying out too. I argued that no toy manufacturer would create such a thing, and that I certainly wouldn’t have bought it for them anyway. (I was more certain about the former rather than the latter part of that statement, but still.) They swore up and down that there was such a game, and that I had indeed purchased it for them. Adam expressed his doubts too, and my money was on him. If such a game had been created, surely their contemporary, Adam, would have known about it. Also, judging from Kristen and Courtney’s fits of giggles, it seemed like they were working hard to pull our legs. We weren’t having any of it.
Kristen and Courtney stuck to their story, adamantly arguing that there really was such a thing as a booger-picking game. So Adam and I demanded proof. And what does any red-blooded American family do in such a circumstance? Why they Google, of course. Adam brandished his laptop and the girls began to enter various search terms. Within a matter of moments came a victory cry shouted simultaneously from over the keyboard: “Gooey Louie!” A bit of research revealed that the
Gooey Louie game was originally released in the mid-1990s by
Pressman Toy Corporation. As it turns out, a talking version was released in 2003. Perhaps if Santa could come up with one of those talking Gooey Louie games for next Christmas it would put an end to that annoying Operation buzzer that Laura and I have endured for two straight Christmases now.
2008
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