Most ingenious ideas begin with a light bulb. You might think that I mean the little imaginary glass globe that hangs above every inventive person’s head. The bulb dings as it flashes on when another original idea is born in the brain of it’s creative host. Most likely, the first brilliant dreamer that this little bulb hovered over would have been none  other than Thomas Edison, the inventor of the the electrical light bulb.

But this time, the brilliant idea, and floating globular light, graced the crown of my amazing husband.

*Ding!*

Ironically, my husband’s bright idea began with a real true light bulb that he screwed into our boys’ bedroom lamp.

The lamp…a perfect night light that would illuminate the way to the hallway should any of our boys need to exit their room in the darkness of night.

The lightbulb…a specialized bulb with a wireless bluetooth speaker set right in the middle of the illuminating glass disk that could be conveniently screwed into any average household lamp.

The idea…an easy and pleasant way to wake our children in the morning with their favorite songs gently floating out of the bedside lamp. The music would start simply by the push of a button on our phone as we got ready in the bathroom down the hall. There wouldn’t be any more mornings where mom was going to have to walk into the kids’ room twelve times to get the sleepy heads up.

It was a brilliant (see what I did there?) idea that had come together perfectly!

Or…so we thought.

The night before we were to try out our new wake-up method we were lying in bed, Lance with his head phones on, flipping through social media posts. The day was done and both of us were exhausted and were ready for sleep. The boys room had finally grown quiet from their nightly routine of weird noises, occasional chuckles and boy chatter that always preceded a night of rest.

Thats when Lance scrolled across a clever McDonald’s commercial that he knew I would love to see. This is where things go downhill…fast.

Now, before I get ahead of myself, watch the video below so you can experience this blinding, or, ahem, deafening moment, in all it’s glory.

 

I love music. Lance loved this commercial. This was the perfect combination and he wanted to share it with me halfway thorough his viewing it. He called my name and quickly pulled his headphones out of his ears, then out of his phone. That’s when the phone went silent. Even though the commercial on his screen showed someone was talking there wasn’t any sound. In an attempt to correct it Lance turned his volume up, but still there was no sound which puzzled both of us.

And that’s when it happened.

In the beginning years of marriage, Lance’s best friend used to have some type of large rodent-type animal that lived in the walls of their farm house in rural Colorado. You could hear it bumping around in the narrow caverns of sheetrock that bordered the house. We never saw what it was but the living being made it’s presences known to anyone who would stay in the house for more than an hour or two.

Though I’m thankful we have never had a rodent stowing away in the panels of our home, this particular night we did have a musical explosion in our wall that separated our room from the boys bedroom. Yup. It was a full orchestral invasion, accompanied by a powerful choir singing about Jane and her Maestro burger.

A muffled chorus came through the sheetrock.  “JANE, JANE, JANE!” and “YUMMY, YUMMY, YUMMY!” were all we heard before it dawned on us what was happening.

Handel himself would have praised the ear-shattering volume that this hungry choir could project.

In the boys’ room, there was a loud thump of something landing on the floor and the once quiet room quickly erupted into thumps, bumps and rustling of curious young ones being awakened by, what was supposed to have been, the pleasant alarm set for the next morning.

Realizing that he hadn’t turned off his bluetooth connection, the slow realization came to both of us. The commercial went from playing in his headphones to being feed straight to the speaker in the boys’ nightlight, full volume. Lance flicked his phone off, jumped up and ran into the kids’ room. He found three very-awake boys sitting straight up, wide-eyed, in their beds and one shaking dog standing in the middle of the room.

Needless to say, after a good laugh was had, we all went to bed that night a little frazzled…and…a little bit hungry for a burger, and Momma woke the boys the next morning.