Dear Diary,

I wish I had a sledge hammer.

Probably the coolest and most incredibly annoying toy my daughter got this Christmas was a voice-activated password-protected diary. The diary itself is a plastic box that opens with the right password, to reveal a small paper notepad inside.

The first clue that this was going to be one of those presents I hated, was when the gift giver’s husband gently suggested that we not start playing with it until we got home.

At our next Christmas stop, my daughter opened up the diary. Recording the password started out easily enough. Her first password was “please open”. She also recorded intruder alerts and a sound for password success. When everything was in place, she said to the diary: “please open”. Nothing happened. “Password incorrect” was the response from the diary. She had also programmed it to scream for every wrong password, so it yowled. The thing is, your voice has to be exactly the same when you say the password. The background noise also has to be the same.

“Pretty please open?” my daughter asked, shaking the thing. There was uncertainly creeping into her voice. Then this play session devolved into tears and she started begging: “PuhLEEESE open!”

“Intruder alert”, said the diary. Scream. “Intruder alert. Shutting down”.

Thankfully, whatever sicko designed this toy, also put a little button in the back to reset the whole thing.

No matter what phrase she programmed in (“Darn it open!” was a good one) it only opened about every 100th try. The begging, pleading and arguing with the toy went on basically throughout the entire holiday. She certainly played with it, I give the designer that, but it should have come with a bottle of headache tablets for the parents.

After a couple of days with this, my friend gave her a real diary. It had a little lock and key and pretty owls on the front. Once upon a time she would have swooned over it, but now she looked at it with some puzzlement, turning it this way and that.

“It’s not password-protected,” she said, puzzled.

Thank goodness for that. I certainly hope voice-activated passwords aren’t the way of the future, because if so, my first password will be: “Stark raving mad”.