I’m driving around with a pink princess bicycle in the trunk of my car.  It’s for my niece’s birthday this weekend. I picked it up on Saturday after my own birthday lunch with my family (which itself the morning after a birthday pub meet with my friends), and I was very tired and I staggered into Toys R Us and had to have the store person use a ladder to get the very last pink princess bicycle down off a tall shelf.  I looked at it. There was a sticker on it that proclaimed “READ THE OWNER’S MANUAL.”

Owner’s manual? It’s a goddamn bike for a three-year old.  What, you have to change the oil every fifty yards?  Is there a GPS unit that intones “THE BATHROOM IS LOCATED THREE FEET TO YOUR LEFT. NO, YOUR OTHER LEFT.” Some things had better be intuitive enough to use without a manual, and this bike had better be one of them.

Then I went to buy it and the clerk said that I could buy a protection plan for only $10 more.

A protection plan for a kid’s bike?  I understand the concept of a protection plan for a plasma TV or a computer.  But if this bike breaks down, that means either 1) my niece is on the bike at the time and is therefore hurt or 2) could have been on the bike and therefore hurt.  I’m supposed to pay Toys R Us in case the bike breaks down?  They had better be prepared to pay me.  And I’m thinking six figures rather than ten bucks.

So anyway, I’m driving around with this bike in my trunk and I’m not sure if I’ll make it all the way to this weekend without going back to the store in question and ramming the bike down Geoffrey the Giraffe’s very long throat.  Time will tell.