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Nothing plastic and nothing that makes noise.

They always ignore my rule.

On Christmas, my kids squealed as they opened up matching pink and blue plastic

walkie-talkies.

Oh joy.

These things were cheap, LCD screens that reminded me of my first digital camera back in 2007.

The kids, of course, loved them. The little picture and picture display, the

press to talk button. Eureka, whose four and a half, figured that out quickly. Echo, who is

to and change, is still struggling with the concept. Honestly, it doesn't matter. Eureka likes to

talk. Echo likes to, and absorb. Most

often she's announcing from across the house, Hello, it's Eureka! What could be more important

to communicate than the fact of her own existence? Echo giggles at the face and voice of

his sister, transiting across the impossible distance of the living

room to appear in his hand. That's how it normally went, but I recently found them fighting.

Eureka was talking into her walkie-talkie, which meant that her voice was emanating from ECHO's

walkie-talkie. So what's the problem? Well, Echo didn't want her voice

...