Helen and Jake, Plugged-In Parents

[The following dialogue is from Helen and Jake's webpage. The words were colored in the original version to distinguish one speaker from the other, but the color also has an impact on the conversation, as you will see. The two rectangular buttons are from the same site. TAG]


With the demands of a two-career household (three, if you count the fact that I do twice as much work as anyone else at my firm) it's difficult to keep family lines of communication open, let alone find the time to truly share to each other's feelings and concerns.

Can I be purple instead of blue?

Jake! We've already wasted 15 minutes choosing colors.

But what about my feelings and concerns?

Alright, but don't change your mind again.

This is the last time.

Because I have due diligence that's due to do.

Hey! That's a tongue twister!

Anyway, we were truly relieved when we found a web site where you can set up a family homepage and access it 24-hours-a-day from anywhere in the world.

Not that we ever get to go on a vacation, damn it! Now I wish red weren't already taken.

With this new homepage, I don't feel so bad when I have to work through the weekend or leave the house before sunrise or when I recite docket numbers in my sleep.

I thought you were just counting a really big bunch of sheep!

I can parent on the run, without having to eat up a lot of time hanging around my husband and children waiting for them to say something worth paying attention to. Oh, that sounds awful, doesn't it? Is this just a way to shirk the responsibilities that come with choosing to reproduce in the optimistic bloom of youth, never imagining that someday you would find yourself shouldering the bulk of the difficult parenting decisions while your spouse remains blissfully disconnected from reality, lost in a dream world of his own making?

I didn't expect this purple to look so violet.

Click here to see our family page on Broadbeat.com

[Broodbeat.com . . . they misspelled it on the original MTV webpage, not the first mistake I've caught there . . . is yet to come. The original link to the Helen and Jake page left off the "index.html" thinger at the end, so the page link would not have worked without fixing. TAG]