Demon Wheel

Our "sea freight" showed up last Tuesday, precariously tied atop the bed of a true flatbed pickup truck in massive wooden crates. Some trucks claim to be flatbeds. But in reality, they have flat beds with big railings, making them less like "flatbeds" and more like "valleybeds". I admit "valleybed" lacks the ring of "flatbed", and as such the term would probably not have made it into the Eagles' song "Take It Easy": the lyric "it's a girl, my lord/ in a valleybed Ford/slowing down to take a look at me" just kind of wants for oomph. The song probably wouldn't have charted with such an awkward lyric, the Eagles would never have been famous, and Glenn Fry and Don Henley would never have got in a big fight, reconciled, and ripped off millions of people who paid hundreds of dollars for tickets to the mid-1990s Hell Freezes Over tour.

You can clearly see how Halen feels about paying hundreds of dollars for tickets to an Eagles show.

Anyhow, back to the movers. The point of the previous rambling paragraph is that our belongings arrived on a true flatbed truck. The bed had no railings. I'm convinced the driver did not turn on the way to our house. I don't know how he did it, but I think he used a voodoo doll, a pair of pliars, and a metric ruler. Or maybe he just drove really slow. I don't know... it was one or the other.

The good news is our belongs all arrived safe and sound. The bad news is the kids' ridiculous toy steering wheel -- aptly dubbed "Demon Wheel" by me -- also arrived safe and sound. It's seriously the toy that won't die. It's just a stand-alone red steering wheel, perhaps 9 inches in diameter, with several buttons that make funny noises -- such as a revving sound, a horn beeping, and the tick-tock of a blinker -- when kids push them.

But this is no ordinary toy. It's possessed. When we lived in D.C., the Demon Wheel would honk in the middle of the night for no reason and freak me out. Sometimes I'd just walk into the kids' empty room and the Demon Wheel would rev its plastic little engine at me from across the room. No one was touching it or even standing near it. It would just rev at me. Freakiest thing ever.

So I was secretly hoping it would fall into the ocean during the trans-Atlantic boat ride and terrorize some hapless giant squid, but alas. As I was making my way through the boxes stacked in Savannah's room last Tuesday, trying to get to the washroom to do my business, I heard a faint honking noise eminating from one of the boxes. The Demon Wheel had found me. I sleep with one eye open.