A friend texted Joseph in the middle of recording to say that getting old is a bitch. Not the knees. Not the back. The lecturing. Her kids are in their thirties. She is not old — she has just been reclassified.

Two villains tonight. The tech-support warden, the adult child who has decided one forgotten password is a diagnosis, and who does the voice — the slow one, with the little pause in the middle. And the concerned committee, the relatives who caucus about you without you and turn up having already decided.

Joseph gets into the coup nobody announces: thirty years of being the family's operating system, quietly deleted in one afternoon because your kid knows one thing about a phone that you don't. Why "I'm just trying to help" and "give me that, let me do it" are not the same sentence. And the two things you are allowed to say at the same time — I understand you're scared, and give me back my phone.

She kept multiple humans alive through fevers, heartbreak and one truly regrettable haircut. She is not confused. She's just not in a hurry, and you've mistaken that for decline.

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