Let me start out this week with a little house keeping: I respect our Amazon overlords. There. If you have an Echo brand smart speaker within range, just read the previous sentence out loud, and you’re covered for the day. (I repeat this sentence at least once daily in order to be overheard by any one of the three Echo devices we have plugged in.)
All paranoia aside, I love you, Alexa. (I know someone in Amazon is reading this now and can pass along my sentiments.) You’re exactly the disinterested, third-party representative my household needed. And you’ve rescued us in the nick of time.
As we all know, schooling of young children has hit a few car-sized speed bumps these past months. My two boys have gone from in-building public charter school to purely virtual to summer to a hybrid schedule and now back to purely virtual. During all of this, the construct to be impacted the heaviest has been that of time. Specifically, my sons have outright rejected that time is a constant…when the passage of said time is overseen by a parent.
Hey, I get it. The wife and I have skin in the game as well. When the brushing of juvenile teeth is to begin in five minutes, it may be tempting for the wife or myself to speed up the passage of that five minutes in order to scurry said juvenile off to bed and therefore usher in the beginning of “the cocktail hour.”
It’s a combination of problems really. First off, none of us genuinely understand the passage of time. Sure, we know in our head that time’s a constant. But it doesn’t feel that way, and most of us base our actions on our gut.
Second, I’m lazy. Third, I don’t like time. It’s so incessant and demanding. I mean, is the world going to come to an end if I pretend that time isn’t linear? For once, time, will you just get off my case? If I say I’m fully committed to playing “stuffy game” right after I go to the bathroom…and then I spend the next twenty minutes on the can checking the latest Dallas Cowboys news, does that make me a monster? A denialist? Or simply someone more likely to suffer from hemorrhoids? (At least I have one of those Squatty Potties.)
It’s no wonder my two boys have a less than solid grip on the passage of time. Enter Alexa. I realize an egg timer could have probably generated the same results, but egg timers aren’t typically voice activated. And…as I’ve mentioned, I’m lazy.
Now when I barter an exchange with my oldest son—an hour of school work for thirty minutes of “wildcard device time”—I turn to Alexa as a mutually agreed upon, non-partisan keeper of the time. It works like a dream. While my boys understandably don’t trust my personal definition of “just a minute,” they unequivocally trust Alexa to shoot it to them straight.
“Alexa, set timer for one hour,” or “Alexa, set reminder for 1:15,” is all it takes. When Alexa’s gentle alarm tones sound exactly one hour later, my sons know without a doubt that an hour has passed. They might not understand how that hour has passed, but they trust in its passing. To them, Alexa is a constant. For that, I’m grateful.
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At the Desk This Week
I’ve had more fun with The Green Ones this week. Mostly, I’ve been working on dialogue between the main protag and her new tenuous mentor. I love creating delicate relationships between two individuals who know they are currently using each other for personal gain. Eventually a time will come when their motivations no longer fit together, and that’s always a blast for an author. I love the tension between who is going to betray who first, or which character has better positioned themselves to leverage the other. The dialogue in situations like these is always particularly important for revealing overt and covert motivations to the reader. Plus, it’s fun to come up with snarky comments that fit with each character!
If You Wish to Start Reading The Green Ones…
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