The Cardboard Dog

Act one

Here's the thing about bored kids. Bored is not a place you stay. Bored is a waiting room. Give it ten minutes and somebody's on an iPad, and you're the guy who let it happen.

So my girls were bored, we had nothing to do, and I did what any modern father does when he's out of ideas. I asked a chatbot. What else can I do with my girls that's fun, gets them moving around, and isn't an iPad?

Think about that. I'm asking a screen how to get my kids off a screen. That's asking the fox for a good lock. And the fox said: arts and crafts, build something, get outside, try something different. All things I could have thought of myself. I didn't. That's the whole business model.

Now, every house has a corner. The corner where the delivery boxes go to wait. We had online deliveries piling up, box after box, like the house was slowly being mailed to us one package at a time. I always thought of that corner as clutter. Turns out it's raw material.

So we drew. We built. We painted. A lot of drawing, a lot of building, a lot of paint in places paint was not invited. And by the end, those empty boxes had become a big transformer dog. Part robot, part dog, part whatever was in the recycling. He doesn't bark. He doesn't fetch. He's mostly tape and confidence.

And here's what I love about this dog. No charger. No app. No firmware update. Every week on this show I roast some robot that costs more than my truck, and the best robot I have ever seen was built by my kids out of shipping boxes. It will never once ask me to accept the new terms and conditions.

Then came the fishing. My oldest loves fishing. It's her favorite thing in the world. And I want to be clear about my qualifications: I had none. I knew fishing the way I know plumbing. There's water, something goes in it, and somebody ends up disappointed.

So, back to the chatbot. What bait is best? How do you add the weights? How do you throw the line out there without throwing the whole rod in after it? It answered every question like a very patient uncle who has never once been near a lake. And it worked. We got three fish. Three! In total. I'm not saying I'm an outdoorsman now. I'm saying I could be, with Wi-Fi.

Then the reviews came in. My oldest: "I love fishing." My youngest: "Are we done walking yet?"

Same day. Same fish. Two completely different shows. One is a nature documentary. The other is a road trip where the car never arrives. And honestly, my youngest had a point, because it was hot. Why is it so hot? Who's in charge of this? I'd like to speak to the sun's manager.

Here's what I learned. AI didn't play with my kids. It didn't paint the dog or bait the hook. It just got me unstuck. It handed me a list, explained the weights, and then got out of the way. Which might be the best thing a screen has ever done in my house.

“I'm asking a screen how to get my kids off a screen.”

[laugh track]