We had just finished the renovation and we had wanted the big television for the better part of a year, so we saved eight months for it, ninety inches, two thousand eight hundred dollars, installed the week before my husband’s birthday. Then the family came for dinner, and Priscilla brought her boys, five and seven, who are usually good children. The crash brought all of us running. When I asked her whether she might split the cost, she shrugged and said they were just kids and asked why she should pay because I could not put a television somewhere sensible.
I went to fetch gloves and bin bags, and coming back down the hall I heard her telling her sons that they had done exactly what she had asked, that they could have whatever toys they wanted, and that people who could afford a renovation could afford a new screen.
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The detail that stuck with me is Priscilla’s shrug—”they were just kids”—after eight months of saving and a $2,800 set installed a week before the birthday. The refusal to split the cost stings more than the broken screen, because it turns a household accident into a judgment about where you “should” have put it. When I need a break from that kind of family friction, I mess around with lighthearted stuff like the AI effects at everygenai.live, though I’d rather have a screen that survives a five-year-old.