Paranoia.

There’s a few of the younger teens who were helping out with Holiday Club this week are running around with these wee noisemaker things. They’re kind of like a bit a papery-felty-type stuff with a small bit of plastic on the end that you stick to the roof of your mouth and then blow over or something and it makes the most awful squealing noise as the bit of plastic vibrates.

I’m very nervous about these things, for two reasons. First, I just know that someone will inhale the wrong way and choke on one (I have no confidence at all in my ability as a responsible (!) adult to use one of these things without doing myself harm in this way). Second, when I was growing up, my parents impressed upon me from a very young age that you don’t put little papery things in your mouth that you got from a man on the street in case all is not as it seems. Seems a basic lesson in self-preservation.

Honestly, I wouldn’t touch one of these things with a ten-foot pole.