“I admit I’m tired. You can keep the computer in your room until 9:30. But you do your homework first. And you say grace before dinner.”
For three glorious nights, the MPC reigned over the dining table. Sheldon calculated prime numbers while the family ate meatloaf around him. Meemaw thought it was hilarious. Georgie used it to look up pictures of used trucks when Sheldon went to the bathroom.
The war escalated on night four. Mary, exasperated, unplugged the main power strip.
“The rule’s the rule, Mary,” George said, surprising everyone. He grabbed a beer from the fridge. “You said his room . That’s not his room.”
The next morning, Mary found a formal, three-page document taped to the coffee maker. It was a “Cooperative Use Agreement for Shared Domestic Computing Resources,” complete with a signature line for each family member, a late-fee schedule (one quarter per unauthorized shutdown), and a clause that declared Mary’s power strip “an instrument of intellectual tyranny.”
“A compromise, Father,” Sheldon said, not looking up from his keyboard. “Mother said no computer in my room after 8 PM. She said nothing about the dining room. I have exploited a loophole. It’s what the Founding Fathers intended.”