The Tamagotchi. Notes on another dependent
Demanding ‘creature’. Fed on a schedule. Never, under any circumstances, to be forgotten about during a school day.
It arrives inside an egg, and from that egg emerges a small, needy creature that will require feeding, discipline, and companionship at intervals it alone determines, usually at the least convenient possible moment.
The device itself is modest: three physical buttons, a wavy, rippled frame, as though the whole object were designed by someone who missed the early 2000s very specifically and very precisely.
Should the creature be neglected — and children, it turns out, occasionally neglect things — it will make its displeasure known through a small, persistent, deeply 2004 beeping, precisely the same beeping that once got confiscated, precisely the same beeping that once meant someone's mother was going to have words with someone's teacher.
A brief, personal aside: I have, at present, two actual children to keep alive and reasonably content, which is a task I take extremely seriously and think about more or less constantly. Taking on a third dependent, prone to complaining if ignored, felt like either the worst decision or the funniest one. It has turned out to be the funnier one — mostly because, unlike my second child, this one goes to sleep exactly when you tell it to, doesn't argue about food, and can, in an emergency, be quieted with a single button rather than a full negotiation. Everybody wins. Especially me.
