Bouncy cows and other toys of doom

I tend to think that the inventors of many toys are either A. children themselves, B. elves and who can really be mad at them? or C. evil, hateful adults who do not have children, who in fact hate children, and whose main goal in life is to make the parents of children truly insane.  Rattles.  Chinese finger traps.  Kazoos.  Baby dolls that pee.  Dogs that bark.  Games that come with NINE MILLION PIECES for three year olds.  My brother and sister in law, at the time childless, as well as my father in law, thought it was their duty to buy every annoying and loud toy for my kids; enter books with sounds that had no volume control, a whole band (not just the drum.  oh, no.  a maraca, tambourine and drum, whose sticks were taken away approximately 37 seconds after  realizing they could be used as a weapon and a musical instrument.), and my personal favorite, the recorder aka flute-o-phone.  think most annoying elementary school concerts. ever.  These suckers can now be found in the dollar section at Target.  Jerks.

The other night, however, our bouncy cow (I'm sure it has some sort of official name, but we call it "bouncy cow.") was the toy of doom.  It usually stays on the sunporch, which is our toy/play room at the moment, and the kids know that bouncy cow doesn't come in the house (we've had a few too many near bounces of decapitation or near bounces of eye loss, etc).  That particular night, J attempted to sneak bouncy cow into the house and when we told him to put bouncy cow back, he immediately mounted and began bouncing as high as he could go.  Being that J is still little, he can get some good bouncing air, but bouncy cow is in rough form; she's a bit deflated, has scuff marks all over her hooves, and her ears are squished a bit from being gripped so hard from bouncing/flying toddlers.  That night, as in many nights past, he lost control of bouncy cow.  He bounced off the back and instead of just falling and shattering his little tailbone and being done with it, he hit bouncy cow just right so that he got one tiny little bounce in first that sent him flying toward the edge of the couch and bouncy cow toward his sister's head.  He landed sort of sideways on his butt and just on the cushy edge so that he was totally uninjured, and his sister, while angry that she had a cow shot at her head, remained unscathed.  Times like these I almost wish he would have been injured if it would have taught him a lesson, however I know better.  He would have cried, we would have comforted him, all the while saying things like, "that is what happens when you don't listen" and "that is why we have those rules" and he would have sniffled and hiccuped his way to being okay, and 20 minutes later I would see bouncy cow in flight again.  Which is exactly what happened anyway.  And it landed on another toy that broke, causing mass hysteria from the child who (at that moment) loved that toy.  So bouncy cow and J were both put in time out, the broken toy was given a once over and an attempt at mending, talks of Santa bringing replacements were made, apologies and hugs were given, (though the stupid bouncy cow had nothing to say) life went on, as it always does.

And then bouncy cow made a triumphant arial return, into the head of this mom of the year.  To say it didn't end well for any party involved would surely be an understatement.