Cora is 3YO(3 Years Old) and her friend Sammy is 4YO. They were pretending to talk to each other over their toy phones. Drawing on what her mommy must sound like to her when mommy’s on the phone, here’s one of the things that Cora said:

Yeah, I’m in the office. I’ve got to put my bugs away.

I’d like to make a couple of comments about that.

First, Cora’s mommy — my wife — works in the software industry. She’s at a high enough level within her project’s technical hierarchy that all bugs are ultimately her responsibility. At the same time she’s low enough in the managerial hierarchy that she still fixes bugs by looking at the source code rather than by hiring and firing other people to look at the source code for her. So anyway, this means that Tina spends a lot of time in the office and a lot of time on the phone talking about bugs with both her managers and technical staff. That’s where Cora got the idea about being “in the office” and having “to put [her] bugs away.” I can only imagine that Cora takes the word “bugs” in the sense of the word “crickets.”

Second, the “toy” phones that Cora and Sammy were playing with weren’t really toys: they were old cellular phones that their parents had given them when their parents bought new cellular phones. If you own stock in whatever company makes toy phones, sell. Who wants a hollow plastic phone when you can have a shiny Motorola that flips closed and clips to your waistband?