Teegan over technology
Dispatches From Inside the Fire: Part 7 of 11.
I got technology in my ears, in my pocket, on my wrist. I got agent workers running on my laptop while I walk the dog. Twelve hours a day, seven days a week, for the last two months. Millions of tokens. Millions.
None of it is connection.
Could be a country song tho.
A few weeks ago I took Teegan to the pickleball court. First time he’d picked up a paddle. He’s almost fifteen. Not shockingly, given the dude, he picked it up fast.
He didn’t beat me. But the main thing was we had fun. A lot of fun.
I talked to the woman running the place about trading time for a membership. Even at the pickleball court I’m working angles.
We left, got gas because we were on fumes, went for lunch. He got a sandwich. I got a poke bowl. We sat and ate and talked and checked our phones. Took him for a haircut. I waited in the lobby. More phone.
That was it. That was the whole afternoon. Gas, food, a haircut and a sport neither of us knew how to play well. This is how life gets lived in 2026. In the cracks between the screens. And most of the cracks are screens too.
Two hours with my son. ROI of one hundred percent.
Twelve hours a day with a machine that doesn’t get tired. Doesn’t argue. Never asks me to come watch a show. It doesn’t need me present. It needs me productive. And I’m good at productive.
Millions of tokens. ROI? I don’t know. I really don’t. And I don’t even know what I’d do with that number because it’s not high. It ain’t ninety percent. It ain’t fifty.
Teegan sees the angles. Doesn’t care all that much about winning. Just likes to play. He’s different than his older brother. Always has been. They’d make great partners on the court. They complement each other well.
He turns fifteen on Wednesday. Same age I was when a coach at a basketball camp in Kansas saw the wiring and tried to recruit my entire family. But Teegan is not me. He’s his own player. His own game. No chip on the shoulder. Nothing to prove. Comfortable.
The wiring in his old man is real. Ten projects in fourteen months. The 2 a.m. desk. The book. The coaching app with hundreds of drills. The machine that runs while I sleep. I like the fire. I like traveling alone. But I know the order.
Teegan’s a reader. He says he’s looking forward to reading my book. That’s the kind of motivation a father can get behind.
He knows when I’m at it, I’m truly at it. He also knows when it’s me and him, it’s truly me and him. That hasn’t always been the case. But it is now.
There’s a lot I haven’t told him about what I went through. I drove myself to the emergency room in 2024. Kind of like an engine seizing up. Which was odd because it doesn’t do that. He’d never see it that way, but I let him down. He doesn’t need a letdown. He needs his dad.
The book will spell it out. And if that doesn’t register, he knows I’ll talk about it with him. For him. For me. For us.
Today I’m giving him his first driving lesson. Probably in an empty parking lot somewhere. The kid who sees the angles and doesn’t care about winning, sitting in the driver’s seat for the first time. And his dad, who has the disposition of a borderline insomniac and the attention span of a golden doodle, riding shotgun.
I still like to travel alone. Suits me. But I also like some company now and then. Especially when the seats hold people I love.
Two hours of Teegan today. No radio. No screens. A dashboard and windows.
One hundred percent return on investment.
Derek Simmons has been wired wrong since birth. His youngest turns fifteen soon and beat him at nothing last week but won everything. He writes Standard Correspondence because the alternative is building another app at 2 a.m.
The next dispatch drops next week.
Ahhh, the driving memories you are making together. Great times.
Connection = Always 100% ROI