buzzer joy

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As we approach September, cicada season is starting to wind down; the constant pulsating buzz of the past two months is easing.

We're beginning to find them, dead, scattered about like cast off stogies. Or you find an occasional one with a little buzz left when you pick it up and let it crawl over your hand. Not enough energy left to fly, but still a little buzz on.

The sensation—the buzz in the hand—always reminds me of the Joy "handshake" Buzzer invented in 1928 by Soren Sorenson Adams, creator/manufacturer of such other novelty, practical joke items as the Bug in the Plastic Ice Cube, the Squirting Nickel and the Jumping Coin. (He passed on the Whoopee Cushion thinking it too vulgar.) But it was the Joy Buzzer that was his biggest seller, very popular when I was ten-years-old. 

Getting another ten-year-old to shake your hand was always the biggest problem. Politicians shake hands, not ten-year-olds. You could sometimes find a ten-year-old girl to hold your hand, but a joy buzzer was a pretty speedy way to kill a budding playground romance. 

It's much easier to find a live, albeit half-dead cicada to hold onto. 

And so it goes. (Sorry, Linda.)
   
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