Furby Anne

 

(H)e hath no form nor comeliness;

and when we shall see him,

there is no beauty that we should desire him.

-- Isaiah 53:2b

 

Maddy, 5, has latched on to the latest Kid's Meal prize at "Burber King" like a Skid Row bum on a bottle of Ripple. They're putting a mini Furby in every bag of hardened cholesterol now.

 

You know the Furby: part Yoda, part hamster, part owl -- completely annoying. It swept the toy world several Christmases ago. By now they've sold 40 million of the moody weirdos with the Andy Rooney eyebrows and PMS. They talk, sing, tell jokes, have moving plumage, and even have a website: http://www.hasbro.com/furby/

 

The little freebie Furbys only move their ears. But Maddy has forced me at watergun-point to the "Burber King" drive-through twice recently so she could "collect" two of them.

 

One is a boy. He is green. She named him "Furb."

 

The other is gray with a pink topknot. I'm cringing, because I think her name is "Furby Anne."

 

So here we are, minutes before Christmas, and Maddy's mesmerized. She's been skiing them down the slanted top of our baby-grand piano. She's given them hours of rides in her little red wagon. They've been pulled around on a little toy sled commandeered from our Christmas decorations, with a Beanie Baby cat instead of a reindeer in the traces, an old shoestring. She says innocently that they sleep together; I bite my tongue.

 

My countless hours of Christmas shopping for her are going up in smoke and flames, like the oil wells of Kuwait. Who cares about lovingly-selected, educational toys when you can cuddle with an ugly piece of free plastic? How you gonna keep 'em down on the farm, after they've seen Fur-beee?!?!

 

They're homely! What's the attraction? There's no accounting for people's tastes, I guess. It's kind of like Bethlehem: not too fab, on the surface. But in the end . . . who knew?

 

Years ago, our daughter Eden had a softball coach who resembled a Furby. That's what the girls called him behind his back. He thought it was funny.

 

One weekend they traveled to Clarinda, Iowa, to play the softball team. They were vaunted. They were cigar-chomping and steroid-crazed. Our little girls beat them.

 

On the way out of town, the coach waved the caravan over to the local McDonald's (sorry, "Burber King"). We all went inside. He was so pumped up, he grabbed the microphone:

 

"Hello, Clarinda!" he exulted to the restaurant full of slack-jawed Clarindanians. "How does it feel to know that your softball team just got its tail whipped . . . BY A FURBY?!?"

 

The longest few seconds in the history of the universe passed, until people finally laughed, mostly out of pity.

 

The Christmas they came out, the Furby craze was worse than "Tickle Me Elmo." It was bigger than "Cabbage Patch" or any Play Station upgrade. Parents were hysterical to get one of the scarce Furbys under the tree that Christmas, or else.

 

Cooler heads prevailed at our house. We thought they were weird, ugly and expensive. We couldn't believe the mass hysteria.

 

Then someone we know picked up some last-minute intelligence that one more shipment was coming in to a store an hour's drive away. He got there before dawn.

 

A crowd formed. They were unruly. There weren't going to be enough Furbys to go around.

 

The store personnel put yellow crime-scene tape around the Furby display, hoping for crowd control, and flung open the doors. There was a stampede. The clerk was supposed to hand Furbys out to people, one by one. But he feared he would be trampled - so he started just THROWING them up for the crowd, literally catch as catch can.

 

Our friend has a vertical leap like an NBA star, so he got one. He hugged it, and waited for the crowd to disperse.

 

He saw an older woman sobbing, rocking back and forth, Furby-less.

 

Geeeeeeez. Our friend did the unthinkable: he gave her his.

 

A touching Christmas story of sacrifice and compassion?

 

Nah. He just didn't want to get mugged by the angry mob on his way back to the car. †