You know, sometimes you just sit there, maybe you’re in the visitor's lounge at one of these places, the air conditioning always too high or too low, and your grandson is across from you, trying so hard to look engaged, but you can practically SEE the pixels forming behind his eyes, the controller vibrating in his phantom grip. And you’re talking, because what else is there to do? About the aches, the pills, the endless litany of the failing corporeal form. The new rash that’s probably just eczema but feels like the first symptom of something much, much worse. And you see his eyes, those beautiful, young eyes, flicking to the clock, to the door, to anything but your face, and you know, you just KNOW, that he’s mentally calibrating his next gaming session. Is that awful? Does everyone feel this? The way your own words become a kind of dull, repetitive hum, a barrier between them and whatever digital escape awaits? And you remember, vividly, the times you were him. Sitting with your own grandmother, her stories looping, her complaints about the draft, the cost of living, the insoluble mystery of a new bruise. And you’d nod, and smile, and secretly you were already out the door, running through fields, or lost in a book, or plotting some youthful rebellion. You were wishing for freedom, for the simple, uncomplicated joy of *not being there*. It's a kind of recursive empathy, isn’t it? A generational echo. You see yourself in his barely-concealed impatience, and you don’t even resent it. How could you? Because you were him, and now you’re her, and the cycle just… continues. It’s like a genetic memory of restlessness. The silence after you finish a sentence, the way he jumps in with a quick, “That’s rough, Grandma,” almost too quickly, too brightly, it’s not malicious. It’s just… youth. And you want to tell him, just GO. Go play your games. Conquer your digital worlds. Because soon enough, the roles will reverse again. And someone will be sitting across from him, recounting the existential dread of their own failing organs, and he’ll be wishing he could just escape into whatever new, immersive reality the future holds. It’s the human condition, I suppose. This desperate longing for somewhere else, somewhere *better*, even when you're supposed to be present. It’s not a lack of love. It’s just… life. And the clock keeps ticking. ALWAYS ticking.