THE THANKSGIVING BABY MONITOR AFFAIR

VINTAGE FISHER PRICE BABY MONITOR

The average Piano Technician visits a clients home several times a year, often spending an hour or more working and chatting.  You get to know the family well. Watch the kids grow up. Witness their triumphs and tragedies. Attend some of the weddings and too many of the funerals. See a lot of marriages break up. Often a cheating spouse is found out by accident.  I had a businessman send Valentines Day flowers to both his mistress and his wife.  The florist mixed up the deliveries and the wife wound up with the flowers and card intended for the mistress.  Then there was the Doctor who, after telling his wife he could not afford a new car for her, bought one for his girlfriend.  Imagine the wife's surprise when she got a telephone message from the dealership saying it was time to bring in HER new car for its first service appointment.  I could write pages of  similar stupid mistakes that resulted in divorce, but, the most bazaar of all was the Thanksgiving baby monitor affair.

After the Lindbergh Baby was kidnapped from the family's nursery in 1932,  ZENITH went to work on developing a system to monitor a baby's room which it marketed in 1937 as the ZENITH RADIO NURSE. Not many were ever sold because the price of $20 was equivalent to over $300 in today's money.  In the early 1980s, building on the new wireless phone technology, FISHER PRICE picked up the ball and started marketing baby monitors at a more affordable price.  Still, not many were in use at that time, so, when visiting a nursery one would not assume a monitor was in use.

A family we will call XX had a daughter who was a freshman in collage and also, a late in life, newborn son.  Family XX was hosting Thanksgiving dinner for their next door neighbors, and long time friends, family ZZ. As dinner wound down XX's coed daughter excused herself saying she had plenty to eat and was going upstairs to check on her new baby brother.  A bit later the husband from family ZZ went off to use the bathroom.  He met up with the daughter in the nursery and they set about resuming an affair which had began when the girl was a high school junior. Neither mister ZZ, nor daughter XX, was aware that a baby monitor was broadcasting their goings on in the nursery directly to the dining room bellow!  A Thanksgiving dinner no one will ever forget.