Magical Leg

Now that I have become a father I have been introduced into the world of toys that make annoying, or even frightening noises. Though they may be annoying to me, the person who enjoys them most generally gets their way and gets to make the noise whenever they want. This includes both child and mother . . . and me.
One of these toys is a cloth cow attached with Velcro to an arch over an infant’s chair. When you pull down on the cord it “plays” Old McJoshy. After being pulled dozens of times the tune becomes slurred and the key changes often making the tune nearly unrecognizable. So the merely annoying sound becomes a tune that makes me want to claw my eardrums out. Don’t worry, I’d never do that. The music also gets softer as it gets pulled time and time again. Sometimes it even stops working all together. I’d rather have it working well than poorly or not at all, for McJoshy’s sake.
One of these days that the musical cow was working fairly poorly I was getting somewhat fed up with it. Holding it by the cord I hit the toy against my leg trying to fix it the old fashioned way. I then pulled the cord and to my amazement the toy worked – almost as good as new. The song was a tempo and in the same key throughout the whole song, yet it was still a little quieter than when new.
This could have passed as coincidence, but lets go to a few weeks earlier. . .
Amanda got a toy from her cousin for Christmas that makes a chattering type noise when you squeeze it. A couple weeks after returning home with this chattering toy I was repeatedly squeezing it so it would continuously make the noise. Instead of first getting quieter, slower, and slurred, the toy just stopped. I’d squeeze, and there was nothing. No noise at all. I felt bad because this was Amanda’s toy and now it didn’t do what it was meant to do. I tried making the noise myself for Amanda, but it wasn’t the same.
Let’s return to right after fixing the cow. I remembered that the chatterer wasn’t working so I thought, “I haven’t tried hitting that against my leg. I guess it’s worth a shot.” Well it was worth a shot. After one nice whack (which did hurt slightly) the toy was back. I went into the kitchen and showed Amanda. She was very excited. I told her my leg must be magical and she agreed.
You be the judge.