Duckies
May 17th, 2013 by PotatoBehold bath toys:
On the right is the ducky I have (and let us not now get into the issue of why a grown man with a PhD has a rubber duckie of his very own). It is an “evil duckie”, yes, but it has been built from the traditional, recognizable form. On the left is a new duckie that Blueberry has.
I do not understand this duckie.
Frankly looking at this thing just freaks me out. It sits there on the bathroom counter at night, watching me brush my teeth.
The wrongness of it gets under my skin and gives me the willies. The strange spiral markings, the hyper-dilated pupils, the weirdly-shaped beak, the centre-line seam, and the tiny head positioned in the middle of its body, with just a bit of off-kilter attitude evokes a sense of being amongst the alien other that the red tint and horns of mine do not come close to doing. There is a part of me that does not want this evil thing to be anywhere near my child, though her abstract amoeba bath toy is totally cool with my subconscious as would be the red duckie with horns (which is supposed to evoke evil).
This is not the only toy of hers that I find to be creepy — just the other day I came home to find a creepy stuffed horse in my bed, and wondered if the baby mafia was out to get me — but this is the one that turns my stomach the most.