Dear Readers:

Usually these issues of The Democracy Center On-Line focus on serious issues - the upcoming ant-bilingual initiative, the corporate loophole in Proposition 13, etc. In the spirit of the holidays, and on the day in which parents are supposed to set out to fill America's malls, we offer this little slice of family life (and a good potential warning if you are headed to a mall this weekend).

We'll be back to more serious fare in the next issue.

Happy holidays from The Democracy Center

My daughter's Tamagachi just met its demise under the deliberate swing of a claw hammer. The hammer was in my hand.

For those who don't know (those oh-so-fortunate few) Tamagachis are the current craze among the 8 to 12 year old set, video games small enough to fit into eager little palms. They hang like compact little computer monitors, on strings and chains around the necks of innocent elementary school children all over the U.S. - all over the world perhaps by now.

Alas for Elly's Tamagachi, it finally chirped one time too many. Oh yes, chirp! You see inside these blasted little mini-video games lives some variation of a kitty, or puppy, or space alien or generic "cute thing". Their little LCD lives come complete with the need to be fed, the need to sleep, the need to be played with and even the need to be cleaned up after they you-know-what. When they need attention they do not wait, they demand it, with a rhythmic chirping that I am absolutely sure was the product of some toy industry competition for "most annoying sound".

It was Sunday afternoon and Elly and Miguel had darted out to play at the park. Alone, I had a rare moment of quiet to read the Sunday paper. As soon as they left the chirping began. I thought it would stop, but as I waded through a ponderous article on globalization and another on legislative term limits, the electronic chirping continued. I was helpless. The only people who knew the highly complicated of sequence of button pushing needed to stop it were blocks away having races across the monkey bars.

I finally got up to see if my graduate degree in public administration might somehow have provided me with the secret skills I needed to shut it off. After several minutes of totally free-form button experiments, all I had succeeded in doing was feeding it so many times that it got sick. Charming, but it was starting to make me sick from its intensifying chirps for help.

I knew of one potential solution, the pin-sized "reset" button on the Tamagachi's back. My hesitation to even go near this button was extreme. During the small beast's first weekend in our house (I refuse to acknowledge it as a family member) I had accidentally pushed this button and committed microchip euthanasia. "It was three years old!", my daughter had shrieked in horror. Each day the kitty inside lives without being reset by an unsuspecting parent or curious little brother, it ages one year. Sending the kitten inside to meet her maker was an experience I did not want to repeat.

Nothing worked. Not button pushing, not burying it under pillows, not closing it behind doors, not even a hopeful look down the street to see if my little technicians were on their way home. I have no idea what I was thinking when I walked nonchalantly over to my son's tool box and fished around for the hammer I new resided inside? This is what they must mean by "temporary insanity." All I could think of was the story of a friend of ours who teaches fifth grade who actually destroyed a Tamagachi he had taken hostage from a student after it chirped through half his math lesson (the student's parents sent him a thank you note). I knew that it was possible to destroy them.

Okay, so I did provide the transportation to and from the mall the day that Elly insisted on spending her birthday money on her little contraption. But the chirping was starting to make me feel like Jimmy Stewart in "Vertigo". My grabbing the hammer was more an act of nature than a conscious decision. I had an alibi.

Okay, I didn't smash Elly's Tamagachi with a hammer. But I fantasized about it a lot and I surely would have gotten around to developing the full rationalization I needed but for the fact that, just at my weakest moment, my kids came through the door. Recognizing my dementia they rescued the kitty from my grasp. A few expert button pressings later the chirping ended. Now the house is once again quiet, except of course for the out of synch duet of my children on the clarinet and trumpet. Both instruments are a good deal more expensive and a good deal more resistant to claw hammers. Maybe I'll go out for a spin on the monkey bars.

THE DEMOCRACY CENTER ON-LINE is an electronic publication of The Democracy Center, distributed on an occasional basis to more than 600 nonprofit organizations, policy makers, journalists and others.

Please consider forwarding it along to those who might be interested. People can request to be added to the distribution list by sending an e-mail note to the address below.

Permission is granted to copy or excerpt any material in the newsletter, with credit to The Democracy Center.