My parents gave Aitch a little red ride-on Jeep for Christmas — not the motorized kind that costs more than my first car, but a low-tech kiddie-powered toy. It does have some electronic components, though, because that’s the law — the battery lobby apparently has a stranglehold on the toy-industrial complex. There are buttons on the dashboard which, when pushed, make car noises. Some of these are traditional, like an engine starting or a horn blaring. Others are somewhat unexpected — kids’ auditioning-for-Annie voices singing, “Start the engine, oh what a feeling!” and braying, “Coooool Jeep!”

This morning, I was eating my breakfast when the Jeep, apropos of nothing, suddenly emitted in trochaic octameter,

“Hold on tight! It looks rough ahead.”

I know that doesn’t quite scan to eight feet on the page, but it does when recited. I thought Husband must have jostled the Jeep in passing. Then, an hour later, as I was on the phone with a client:

“Hold on tight! It looks rough ahead.”

Shortly thereafter, as I was answering an e-mail:

“Hold on—hold on tight! It looks rough ahead.”

and so on at irregular intervals throughout the afternoon.

Now, what am I to make of this? If my life were a bad off-Broadway play, this utterance would serve as ominous foreshadowing of some third-act tragedy. If my life were a horror movie, the it would be the embodiment of a ghost in my hundred-year-old home, who possessed the Jeep to give voice to a prophetic warning. If my life were completely neurotic, the voice might be a projection of my unconscious fears and desires.

Hmm.

Just to make sure, I asked Husband, “Honey? Have you heard Aitch’s Jeep say anything to you today?”

“The damn thing’s been driving me crazy. It kept going off all through my conference call.”

Good. Not completely neurotic.