The Great Kazoo

If I ever meet Warren Herbert Frost, remind me to punch him square in the nose.  Except I think he died in the early 1900's, so meeting him is kinda out of the question.  I guess I can exhume his corpse, and then punch him in the nose, but that seems like a lot of work.  I would have to find out where he was buried, then find a shovel, and then probably get gas for the car before I leave...  Besides, if I were to bet on who would win in a nose punching match, I would put money on the dead guy.

Who is Warren Herbert Frost?  He's the bastard that invented the instrument of torture called the kazoo.  Some kazoologists may argue that George D. Smith stands as the true inventor of the kazoo, but those people are stupid.  George D. Smith only gave the instrument its illustrious submarine shape in 1902.  Warren Herbert Frost actually submitted a patent for "an instrument or toy" which bore the name kazoo in 1883.   It was patent number #270,543, just in case you want to look it up.  I did, and I'm a better man for it.

Patent for parent torture device by Warren Herbert Frost

I made the mistake of giving the Princess a kazoo that I got free at a children's conference.  "Hey a kazoo," I remember thinking.  "I had one of these as a kid, and I loved it.  I wonder what happened to it."  What happened is my parents stole the instrument and melted it in a big vat of hydrochloric acid, so it could never be used again.  I know this because I just ordered a vat of hydrochloric acid off of Amazon.com so I can destroy hers without any evidence left behind. (Don't worry, my hydrochloric acid comes with a child safety cap.)



If you haven't ever heard a child playing with a kazoo, then you were born deaf.  Children play kazoos so loudly that neighbors as far as four houses down will board up their windows thinking that a swarm of musically inclined killer bees have just attacked.  I made the mistake of sending the Princess outside to play her kazoo, and now I'm being fined by our housing association.  Our dog even left the house and checked into a Ramada Inn sixty miles away from us.  He won't come back until all kazoos have left the premises and we sign a legal, binding contract that we will not let any kind of membranophones in the house ever again.  I had to look up membranophone in Wikipedia before I agreed (an instrument which modifies its player's voice by way of a vibrating membrane), and then added an attachment that the dog cannot use words that I don't understand.

Fortunately, the kazoo may be loud, but at least it sounds horrible.  You have to hum into the device to get it to produce a buzzing sound, although realistically, you get the pleasure of hearing both the hum and the buzz.  To an accomplished kazoo player, the dual sounds can make you stab yourself in the ear with a number 2 pencil.  To a child playing the kazoo as loud as she can, the noise creates an instant migraine headache that only can be resolved by supplying said child with copious amount of M&M's and letting her watch all the Micky Mouse Clubhouse she can stand.  Thankfully, the Princess usually refrains from her kazoo playing until I'm on an important phone call.

I'm at my wits end.  I tried hiding the kazoo, but she found it.  I tried throwing it away, but as if by the magic of annoyance, the damn thing reappeared two days later.  We had hoped that when she fell directly on it, that it would be crushed beyond recognition.  But it was perfectly designed to resist blunt force trauma.  The Princess even slipped me a brochure about visiting the world famous Kazoo Factory and Museum in Beaufort, South Carolina.  I guess I'll just sit here and wait for the hydrochloric acid to arrive.