I remember the way my knuckles used to crack when I worked at the cannery, cold mornings, hands plunged in brine. That same ache in my bones, it's back now, but not from work. It’s from typing, hours and hours, defending that young man. The podcaster, I mean. My grandson, bless his cotton socks, he told me about him last year. Said, “Grandma, you’d really like this fella, he just… tells it like it is.” And he did, in a way. Had that easy chuckle that reminded me of my father, before the war took the lightness out of him. I found myself, God help me, getting into arguments online. With strangers! I, who barely trust the internet to keep my social security number from falling into the wrong hands. But there they were, these kids, tearing him apart. Calling him names I wouldn’t repeat in polite company. And it felt like… like watching someone kick at the legs of a good dog. That same low thrum in my chest, that quick heat under the skin, just like when someone would talk down to my sister after her husband left her with two small children and nothing but a stack of bills. That protectiveness, it just rose up. I’d spend entire evenings, long after the eleven o’clock news, hunched over my tablet, the blue light making my crow’s feet even deeper. Crafting paragraphs, citing things I’d heard him say, trying to explain away some misstep or misunderstanding. It was a compulsion, really. Like scratching an itch you know you shouldn’t, but you can’t help yourself. I even missed a bingo night once. Bingo! My whole life I’ve been chasing that fifty-dollar jackpot, and I chose to argue with some twenty-year-old in Nebraska about a podcast host’s perceived lack of… something or other. The ridiculousness of it all, it almost makes me laugh. A dry, humorless chuckle. The peculiar thing is, I don’t even agree with everything he says. Not by a long shot. Some of his ideas, they’re a bit… airy. Like he’s never had to worry about what’s for dinner or if the furnace is going to give out in January. But there’s a sincerity to him, a kind of earnestness that reminds me of that feeling you get when you see a young robin fall out of its nest. That urge to pick it up, to put it back where it belongs, even if you know it’s probably doomed anyway. It’s a strange kinship, this. With a man I’ve never met, will never meet, who wouldn’t know me from a hole in the ground. And then last week, I caught myself. Typing away, explaining, defending. And I saw my reflection in the dark screen, my hair a mess, my glasses slipping down my nose. And I thought, “What are you DOING, Martha?” My electric bill is due. My knees have been acting up something awful. And here I am, pouring that precious, finite energy into… this. It was like looking at a photograph of myself from a different angle, one I hadn’t seen before. A little pathetic, maybe. A little lost. Like I was trying to patch a hole in a wall that wasn’t even mine. I haven't posted since. The urge is still there, a little buzz behind my eyelids when I see a notification. But it’s quieter now. More like a hum than a shout. My hands still ache, but it’s a duller pain. And sometimes, when I’m folding laundry or washing dishes, I think about what it must be like, to have so many people shouting at you, both for and against. It must be a lonely kind of spotlight. And I wonder, if I had that kind of… attention, would I want an old woman like me, sitting up at 2am, arguing in my defense? Or would I just want someone to make me a cup of tea?