A is for Alphabet

Today is the beginning of the A-Z blogging challenge! I'll be participating this month along with 900 of my soon-to-be closest friends. Things should stay pretty much the same on the blog except there will be a greater frequency of posts and somehow I'm going to have to wrap them all up with the letters of the alphabet.

Today, A is for...Alphabet.

I don't often discuss my work as a writer and producer for a toy company, because there's all kinds of confidentiality issues (you'd think I was in the CIA) but I think this topic is pretty general and I won't get fired for being unethical. And it will give you a good idea of what I deal with on a daily basis. Because toys are serious business, people. Serious.

As a children's media professional, I feel pretty qualified to talk to you about the alphabet, just to let you know what you got yourself into when you signed up for this challenge.

Here's the deal:

1. The Alphabet is sung the same exact way every single time. It never changes. Don't try and mess with the song. It is what it is.

2. Once you commit to the alphabet, you are in it to win it. There's no way out. However you choose to display or teach the alphabet you must commit to the number 26. 26 flashcards. 26 games. 26 animals. 26 blog posts. You'll think things are fine and dandy. A is for Aardvark! B is for Bear! C is for cat! I've got the hang of this! Awesome! Then you're getting to the end and suddenly you're proposing that V is for Vampire Bat. It's not all fun and games. It's commitment. So if you can't take the A-Z heat, get out of the kitchen.

3. Which brings us to the letter X. I know what's going to happen. You're all gonna try and get clever and fancy and talk about Olivia Newton John in Xanadu or something ridiculous. But I'm here to tell you that X is for Xylophone or X-ray. That's it. And even xylophone is a little tricky. Because it's pronounced slightly Z-ish. And that could really set a child back a few years. Trust me. I've got educational consultants with PhD's jumping all over this stuff. It's X-ray or bust.

4. It's a pretty well known fact that if you even so much as bring up the ABC's, if you even so much as slap it as a label on anything (even a blogfest), you've become learny (I've trademarked this term, by the way) and learny is good. In other words, as we say in the toy biz, "MOMS EAT THIS S*** UP." They believe that if they buy the toy advertising the ABC's, their children will become geniuses with this insane alphabet knowledge. Since you have now ABC'd your blog, you are a hot commodity. For serious.

Good luck!