Fisher or Vincent Price

If the most wonderfully comforting sound in the world is supposed to be the sound of a child's laughter, then why is it used so often in horror movies?

There's nothing worse to me than slow-motion running, singing, carousel/music box tunes and giggling of little kids in horror movies, almost as scary as real life.

Is there a more deeply-rooted, underlying purpose for this thrill tactic? Population control, mabye? Who wants to give birth to a Damien, Reagen, Danny, or Gage? Not me, that's for sure!

One day I was visiting my niece who has a little girl of her own - yes, I'm a great aunt, and that's as close as I'll ever get to kids. Her daughter had a small, battery operated toy that sang a typical lullaby or whatever. Cute, right? Well, not so much when the batteries are going dead.

While standing around in the kitchen, we heard this strange noise coming from the girl's bedroom. It sounded as though Lucifer was in there over-dosing on vicodin. We gave each other the whatthehellisthat look and ran off to see - without any crosses, holy water, or garlic to protect us. We watched in shock as she played along and giggled with this thing as if everything were fine.

Rockabye baaaaaaaabbbbbyyyyy...rrrooooowwrrrrr....

My niece snatched that toy up out of her hands as though it was on fire.

Turn it off! I can't get the batteries out!! Oh, my God, make it stop!

Finally we dislodged the battery and it stopped. (Betcha thought it wouldn't, huh?)

After that commotion, did we change the batteries like any normal people would do? Hell no. My niece not only threw that toy in the trash, but also smashed it down to the very bottom of the bag, and then immediately carted it off to the dumpster outside. Naturally, we didn't hear a child's laughter for about an hour after that.

But she wasn't the only one having a hysterical fit. On top of the little girl's drama, add two stupid, adult women - and I use the term adult loosely - constantly imitating that thing with wild eyes and screeching, crazy laughter. Both of us secretly hoping the abomination, made for children 6 mos and up, wouldn't find its way back into the house.

I'm thinking if the horror movie producers would just record a child's conniption fit instead, they would have something bigger on their hands than the Exorcist and a lot more money in their pockets. Could the world stand such frightening sound effects? Perhaps, they did make it through Clay Aiken's debut album.

Or maybe a better idea would be to just recreate a child's game into a full-blown horror movie. A few ideas come to mind: Operation. Twister. Trouble. And last, but not least, Sorry!

Christmas morning would be very different indeed. Just be sure to have fresh batteries handy.