Our grandsons are visiting again, and as is the tradition for Friday night, I’ve asked their input for some Happy Friday!!! story ideas. Often I can’t transcribe their bantering quickly enough, but tonight I had to do a significant amount of nudging. I asked Gabe first, and his immediate response was, “ummm ummm I don’t know.” Ollie didn’t have much to offer either.

Then, I illustrated the magic of “talk to text” on my iPhone. I opened Notes, and hit the microphone icon and started talking. This can be quite a lot of fun for a silly child like me, because if I utter complete gibberish the phone does its best to translate my weirdness into actual words. Example: after saying a slew of nonsense I just now got Giovanni on Christo room act able to roam if Nick and eat Cambord on Fandor me qua Dodd both back.

Not sure if “qua” or “Dodd” are words. I’m still a child in old man’s clothing so I actually engage in this silliness while texting to friends or family. Some renditions are much funnier.

Anyway… I thought I’d try to get the brainstorms rolling by telling my phone: “My cat is doing a science project on me and it’s preventing me from sleeping properly.” Ollie’s face lit up a bit, and he immediately replied, “your cat’s name is Boogle by the way.” Then I asked him to continue, again with the microphone active on the phone. “I can’t think of anything but that is not what I thought of,” Ollie said.

“What kind of magazines do snakes eat?” I asked. Ollie replied, “mice flavored or other small rodents. But the flavor’s not really actual mouse flavor, it’s more like like fake banana flavoring or fake cherry. Not really an actual fruit flavor.”

Then I turned to Gabe. “Really right for you how many pounds of dog food do you eat every day?” is apparently what the phone thought I said. Gabe answered, “25.” Then I mentioned that 25 pounds is a lot of dog food!!

Next (although she didn’t know it) was my Beautiful Girlfriend’s turn to talk. “Which planet would you like to marry from??” I asked. “None of them, I’m married to you!” she replied. Then I noticed Gabe was trying to “hack” into Nini’s (my Beautiful Girlfriend’s Grandma name) iPad. “What do I do it here what is the password for?” Gabe queried. “How much baloney can you stick in your nose?” I asked. “25 phones,” Gabe replied.

Back to Ollie. I wondered aloud, “When radios calibrate themselves what color are their nostrils?” The phone was sure that Ollie’s answer was: “I see you like a mix between Hughes and a sky blue!” I continued the query: “What are spaghetti molecules made of ?” Ollie said, “well I mean I don’t know but they’re rather delicious. Not sure I want to know.”

Gabe finished up the discussion with the following: “If you find the sheet of paper with the password put it in the Lego box.”

So my friends, these are the types of discussions that never occur at our house. Please do not try to derive any hidden meaning from this small box of brownie mix, it will merely confuse your pets and they may even try to teach you molecular mapping during your nocturnal napping.

Or not.

On the other hand, you have the old masters…