Random Access Mind: Scion of My House, Heir to My Line (Patreon)

I hope this RAM is pretty special to you, because it's pretty fucking special to me.

I've slowed down on posting photos of my child online, both because large groups of random anonymized people are simply the worst and I don't trust them ever and because they're old enough now that it feels to me like consent is starting to come into play.

But Bastian (currently attempting to convince everyone in their kindergarten class to call them Draco) said I could show you their story.

You see, about two weeks ago, I decided to start teaching Tiny Brave Dragon over here to type. This is not, I am told, a thing they get taught in school anymore, and I wanted to slowly introduce computers, not by what you can consume on them even though that's super fun, but that they are a tool to create things. I'm pretty cagey about electronic devices, but it felt healthier to start with the tool aspect so that there's a baseline of "I use this to express myself" before the inevitable rise of "fuck yeah I use this because it blows out my dopamine receptors like a hot firehose of ice cream!"

I really had no idea how into this Bastian would get. Every single day since, after seven hours in school, they come home and beg and plead for my laptop, then "work on my pages" for two hours until dinner. See above photo, hard at their craft.

THAT'S MORE DISCIPLINE THAN I HAVE, KIDDO.

For the most part, I haven't guided much. I opened up a new Scrivener file, explained this is what Mama uses to make books, it's exactly the same, only this one is called Sebastian's Stories and it's all yours. Explained fonts and the cursor and the trackpad.

It's funny, people complain Gen Z and Alpha kids don't actually know how to use computers because they never had to figure out how to use a program without guidance like we did. There's a lot of truth there, but it didn't even take an hour before this one had sorted out how to use drop-down menus, highlight passages to move or delete them, copy/paste, insert page numbers, change the font size, and how to change the color every other word so the story is a rainbow. We've zoomed through a lot of pretty advanced grammar as they experiment with how to make a story and a sentence, paragraph, etc. I frequently here "MAMA THAT WAS THE END OF AN IDEA SO I PUT A PERIOD ON IT!" and lately "I PUT TWO SMALL IDEAS TOGETHER WITH A COMMA!" and "MY RED FOXES WERE RUNNING AT A POINT IN TIME IN THE PAST IS THAT RAN OR RUN OR RUNNED OR RUNNING?" although more often than both "MAMA I FORGOT WHERE THE APOSTROPHE/FANCY AND/QUESTION MARK BUTTON IS!"

It's kind of the best?

So what I wanted to share was the first story they wrote. I helped only with spelling and punctuation, we had one tantrum about grammar because "I DON'T CARE IF IT'S RIGHT THAT'S WHAT I WANT TO SAY" but my advice on storycraft was WHOLLY UNWANTED AND UNWELCOME. This is all Bastian/Draco and the story they wanted to tell.

So when they started in on the raincoat-tree (Habitation of the Blessed) and the Fairy being her own boat (Fairyland) and the intensely described fashionable coat big enough to hold everyone together inside it and protect them (all of life in Haus Valente) I couldn't quite get my head around tiny bebe clearly having an eerily similar imagination to their mother. They've never read or heard any of my books! It's amazing!

So, I present to you, The Magic Raincoat, by Full Legal Name Redacted, so that you can experience the sheer level of cute involved in this island child writing about the 8:15 Fairy.

Oh, and I was summoned a few days ago to behold two lines of asterisks on the screen in the middle of their new story.

"What's that, love?"

"Oh I put the snowflakes in because I want everyone to know it's winter in my pages. But look! If I turn them pink? They're spring flowers!"