Meaningless noises

And for once, I'm not talking about the ones that come out of my mouth...

Theo is, for lack of a better term, phone-obsessed. I can't have a conversation in front of him, and half his toybox is half-filled with dead cell phones, toy phones, unused cordless phones, and old remote controls that he mistakes for phones (honest mistake -- they have a keypad, after all).

A very good friend bought Theo a toy phone for Christmas. His reaction to new phones is always hard to guess in advance, but this has become one of his favorites. We play together with it almost every day ("Hello, Mr. President? We're calling to support the toy stimulus bill.") and it is a reliable attention-getter in the car.

The phone just made the craziest noise -- an infinitely repeating series of half-second tones. I think back in ye olde days they called it a "busy signal."

When I heard it, all I could do was laugh and tell Theo, "Bud, you're never going to know what that means."

One more thing: A quick search for "busy signal" brought up this press release, which also made me giggle.