Robot Puppy Statues

On one of the routes we take on the way home from school, there is a concrete block holding a drain pipe: . Lillian, the story-teller, has decided that it is the base for a statue. Since the statue is missing, she steps onto the base and becomes the statue. What she is a statue of varies from story to story, but lately she is the statue of a robot  puppy.

Her grandfather’s job is to bring the statue into motion by pressing a complicated series of buttons and switches located on the statue’s back. He usually gets the sequence wrong, and has to be coached through the process–quite the challenge for the motionless statue. He eventually manages, through luck mostly, to get the sequence correct, and the statue creaks into robotic life, and clanks down the sidewalk, barking in a mechanical robot puppy voice, until some new story presents itself.

Lillian Speaks of Doughnuts

 

A dialogue between Lillian and her grandfather. 

Lillian: ePa, will you make me some doughnuts?

ePa: I don’t really know how to make doughnuts; I think they are kind of hard. 

Lillian: Do you have an iPad?

ePa: Yes. 

Lillian: Then the iPad will tell us how. There will be a video.

ePa: Oh. 

Lillian: It’s easy. Let’s do it. Sometimes I say “ePad”. It’s short for iPad. Do you know how to spell “doughnut”? Don’t worry. Yia-Yia knows how. She knows most everything.