We searched online and found blogs by parents explaining the tedious process of creating Parental Blocks. All we had to do was sync our accounts by left blinking and scrolling right with our eyes. We stopped reading and typed “parental blocks for parents without implants.” We searched, we Googled, we navigated dead hyperlinks, we called toll-free numbers and sat on hold for hours simply to ask about setting up a password to our children’s accounts. And at long last, a few of us succeeded in placing blocks on our children’s usage.

Our children found ways around them easily.

We became vigilant. We canceled the connection to our apartments, opened our fuse boxes, shut off the electricity, and sat in candlelight with our furious children. They yelled at us, but we informed them we weren’t going to relent. This was for their own good. We were their parents, we said, and we stood strong against them. It was only then, when we’d mounted our counteroffensive and held our ground, that our children retaliated.

How they gained access to our passwords, we have no clue. But here was a list of our past search histories and the emails we’d sent wherein we complained about bosses, or neighbors, or parents, or friends. Here were the porn sites we’d visited, the sexts sent to our partners. Here were databases upon databases of our most shameful secrets, tallied and collated. Our children stood in our living room. Did we understand how easy it would be for them to share this info with the world? they asked. They could make our private lives public with nothing more than wi-fi and a single blink of an eye.

“You can’t do this,” we told them.

“Of course we can,” they said, looking at us as if we were toddlers.

“Please,” we said, “don’t do this.”

And they smiled.

PURPLE HEART

When he thanks us for our service, the General raises his arms like a referee marking a touchdown, and the kids go wild. The adults join in too, hooting and hollering from the bleachers, and I wonder what I’m doing here, mashed into Baker Convention Center next to a guy in military fatigues and a “Make America Great Again” cap who’s manspreading into my space. I look to my son, hoping he’ll turn toward me and smile, but those days are gone; he just claps as the line of teenagers, adults, and a few middle-schoolers crosses the stage to have Valor Medals pinned to their fatigues.