A few weeks ago I bought one of those little round vacuums that drives itself around the floor. My knees are not what they were, and the idea of something else doing the sweeping sounded fine to me.
Bradley did not agree.
The first time it started up, he planted himself in the kitchen doorway and barked at it like it had come to rob the place. Then he backed away. Then he watched it from the hall with his ears up, the way he does when the mailman is late and suspicious.
This went on for a few days. He did not chase it. He did not make peace with it either. He just kept an eye on it, from a safe distance, in case it tried something.
I will be honest. I laughed at him. A grown Labrador, seventy-odd pounds, outdone by a disc that bumps into table legs.
But I understood him too.
Because the first time I opened ChatGPT, I sat there the same way Bradley sat in that doorway. Ready to back out of the room. Not sure if the thing was useful, or if it was going to embarrass me somehow. I did not bark at it. But it was a near thing.
Here is what happened with Bradley. By the second week, he stopped watching it. By the third, he slept right through it. Now the little machine bumps past his bed and he does not lift his head. It is just part of the house. Something that was alarming became something he does not think about at all.
That is the whole arc, really. A new thing shows up. It feels like a problem. You keep your distance. And then, if you give it a little time and do not force it, one day you notice it stopped being scary while you were not looking.
You do not have to make friends with the new thing today. You do not even have to like it. You just have to be in the same room with it long enough.
Bradley got there. So did I.
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