I am sitting in the kitchen, staring deep into my laptop, when the youngest one walks in and stands behind me.
“So now the new thing with the coffee machine is,” he says. This is one of his favourite conversational techniques: begin in the middle; let the other guy supply his own intro.
“Uh-huh,” I say.
“The rubber gasket is starting to protrude, letting coffee leak everywhere,” he says.
“Why do you think that is?” I say. This is one of my favourite techniques: when in doubt, talk like a language processing program from the late 1970s.
“Because some people never clean it, and now it’s blocked with coffee grounds,” he says, removing the
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