Things I’ve Heard on Kids Shows That I Just Can’t Even

1. “Elmo has mail! Elmo loves his blankie! Elmo this! Elmo that!” (Virtually every “Elmo’s World” segment on Sesame Street)

Elmo is all about freaking Elmo. I suppose it’s not all that surprising that he thinks he’s the center of the universe, considering he has a whole damn world named after him. To be fair, he is gracious enough to occasionally permit others a little screen time, namely a goldfish named Dorothy and a pedophiliacally* mustached man named Mr. Noodle. Note that neither of these characters has the ability to speak.

I just don’t want my sons growing up to be narcissistic pricks because some furry red talking carpet with a nitrous oxide addiction made it look cool on TV.

*How ‘bout that for a “word of the day,” Sesame Street?

2. “We found ten gold doubloons! Let’s grab ‘em and GO!” (Jake and the Neverland Pirates)

Okay, WTF is a gold doubloon, and why are we finding them everywhere, every ten seconds? Hey, Disney Jr., let’s teach kids that if they find someone else’s money lying around, the honorable thing to do is snatch it up and run off.

3. “WAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH! More Mee-Mee! More Mee-Mee!”

Right, so that’s not technically the TV. It’s the sound my kids make when I refuse to let them watch Mater’s Tall Tales for the eleventy billionth time. But it still annoys the crap out of me.

Redneck tow trucks are my reason for living!
Why are you trying to kill me?

4. The theme song from Little Einsteins.

I sing this in the shower so frequently that I often find myself wishing I’d brought a hairdryer with me. That opening violin staccato is so damn catchy, it’s dangerous: I have, on occasion, used my razor as a makeshift bow and my overgrown leg hair as strings, pretending to be an orchestral prodigy (in a rocket ship, of course). The scars on my knees are testimony to a few times that I've really gotten into it.

5. “Hot Dog!” (Mickey Mouse Clubhouse)

Mostly because I hate hot dogs. And I’m still suffering PTHDD symptoms as a result of the summer that my best friend and I relied on microwaved hot dogs for every meal because they were cheap, and we were too lazy to make anything else.

6. “Let it go.” (Frozen)

Trust me, I wish I could. But that ice bitch has practically freeze-rayed the lyrics of that song directly into the crevices of my brain. Hopefully they’ll disappear when the mental reiteration of Idina Menzel’s belting leads to my inevitable meltdown.

7. “Swiper, no swiping.” (Dora the Explorer)

Look, if you don’t want him swiping shit, stop calling him Swiper. What the bloody hell do you expect? It’s confusing. As the great T-Swift once said, “Players gonna play. Haters gonna hate. Swipers gonna swipe.” What? She never said that last bit? Oh, probs because that animated fox is so stressed out from the nomenclatural niche he’s been shoved into that he acted out by swiping the lyrics right out of her mouth.

And while we’re on the topic of Dora the Explorer:

8. Dora’s creepy blank stare and slow blink.

Holy mierda, Dora. Stop trying to incinerate my soul with your eerie death glare.

9. Any cartoon that asks my kid a question. (Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, Dora the Explorer, Go Diego Go; I could go on longer than the brain-cell-killing, all-day reruns of any of the aforementioned shows)

Look, I get the whole push for intellectual interaction, but I've never heard my kids respond to questions posed by an animated mutant mouse. I’m not sure I want them getting in the habit of talking to over-sized rodents that don’t really exist. Plus, it confuses them. Mickey’s always asking them questions, and they don’t respond because they know (thank God) that he’s not real. But then when Grandma and Grandpa ask them how they’re doing on Skype, my kids just stare at them blankly, expecting them to break into the Hot Dog dance (OH GOD, refer back to #5).

10. “Little Engines can do big things, especially when they have nice blue paint like me!” (Thomas and The Magic Railroad)

Holy Viagra ad, Batman. I don’t care who funds PBS. I’m not ready to have that talk with my kids just yet, and I don’t need them developing “engine envy” at age two. So stop it with the not-so-subtle sexual subliminal messaging and advertising agenda.

*

Clearly, I just need to get my kids hooked on The Vampire Diaries. That would solve all our problems.