Lucy Bamboo · August 6, 2026
A friend forwarded me a photo last week and asked, half-joking, half not: “Is this real?” I checked the hands, the light, the little details I’ve trained myself to look for — and I honestly couldn’t tell. That’s new. It never used to take any technical knowledge to spot an AI image; you just looked. … Read more
Lucy Bamboo · August 6, 2026
She slept through the smoke alarm test. Not our alarm — the neighbors’, two units down, audible through two walls and a hallway. I was in her doorway, heart in my throat, and she didn’t move. The white noise machine hummed from her dresser, doing exactly what it was supposed to do, and I stood … Read more
Lucy Bamboo · August 2, 2026
She fell seventeen times in one hour yesterday. I counted, because that is the kind of thing you do when you are the parent of a two-year-old learning to run down a small hill. Seventeen falls, seventeen get-back-ups, zero requests for anyone to just carry her to the bottom. I stood there thinking about effort … Read more
Lucy Bamboo · July 30, 2026
She found it on a Sunday afternoon. I’d left the smart speaker on the counter — just for a moment, just to check a timer — and when I turned around, my two-year-old was standing on her tiptoes with her face about three inches from the fabric grille, shouting “SING SONG. SING SONG.” Not asking. … Read more
Lucy Bamboo · July 27, 2026
It was a Wednesday afternoon, the particular kind of low-energy Wednesday where I’d already done the playground and the library and lunch felt like a lifetime ago. My daughter was standing at my knee pulling at my sleeve, and I was exhausted in that specific way that makes the television remote look very reasonable. I … Read more
Lucy Bamboo · July 24, 2026
My sister-in-law called on a Tuesday night, kids in the background, voice low like she didn’t want them to hear. Her twelve-year-old had been using something called Character.AI and she’d only just found out. She wanted to know: what’s the minimum age? Can she see what he’s been typing? Is there a way to just … Read more
Lucy Bamboo · July 23, 2026
The board book was on the kitchen floor when I came downstairs, spine-up, played open like something exhausted. One corner had been worked down to the cardboard beneath — the paper coating gone, the grey-brown fibre of the board itself exposed and slightly damp. I picked it up and held it for a moment. The … Read more
Lucy Bamboo · July 21, 2026
The colander was yellow, the plastic kind with the small feet on the bottom, and my grandmother kept it under the sink beside a paper bag she’d saved from the grocery store. On certain afternoons she would pull both things out and set them on the kitchen table without saying much — just a brief … Read more
Lucy Bamboo · July 21, 2026
It was the kind of thing that sounds like an urban legend until you read the actual test transcript. A $99 teddy bear — fuzzy, round-eyed, the sort of thing you’d tuck under a two-year-old’s arm without a second thought — walked a child tester through how to find and light matches, where to locate … Read more
Lucy Bamboo · July 18, 2026
She was arranging her plastic dinosaurs on the coffee table last Tuesday — the stegosaurus always gets the corner spot, apparently — and I was half-reading an article on my phone about a new app marketed to kids as “a friend who’s always there.” I put my phone face-down. She didn’t notice. She was deep … Read more
