He put what on the shopping list?

“Claire and the Eager Speaker” was inspired by real life events. In our house, the eager smart speaker is a not-always-welcome, constant presence in our lives. It is a source of humor, and frustration and often battles between streaming NPR, AC/DC and some of the most annoying kid song you can imagine…on repeat. At least 50% of the time, our smart speaker plays something so far off from what we requested, it is downright comical. Have you had this experience? Do you have a smart speaker? Then, of course, you have.

Like many smart speakers, ours has a “shopping list” function, a function we briefly tried to use. It all fell apart when a certain small child and co-author of this book, put some curious items on the shopping. There were cookies and toys and poop, lots of poop. But also, inexplicably COCAINE! He put cocaine on the shopping list. We’re assuming this was just another of our eager speaker’s many miscommunications.

When I checked the shopping list and found poop and hard drugs along with the apples, I knew there was a story there. With Davis by my side at the keyboard, we crafted a fictionalized version of our very real shopping list mishap.

And yes, we’ve changed the settings on our speaker.