Sara Jonnson - The Death of Nano-Puppy

 

 

Thanks. When I was eight years old, I had a nano puppy. You guys know what that is? [audience cheers]

 

It's like a Tamagotchi. It's a little plastic egg toy with a screen and three buttons and it's like an electronic pet. It's like a dog or an alien or whatever. And you have to feed it, and bathe it, and play with it, and put it to sleep and basically keep alive this little pixelated dog shaped blob. It was super fun, man, I got to tell you. [audience laughter] I was eight years old, and me and nano puppy are just having a blast, okay? [audience laughter] And we go everywhere together. He's my best friend. I hook him onto my little belt loop on my jeans, and I walk around and he like bounces. I love him. [audience laughter] 

 

But I started to notice after two weeks, every time I need to do something like human eight-year-old related, like sleep or go to school, nano puppy dies of neglect. [audience laughter] The guilt and the devastation and the humiliation that I feel as an eight-year-old is frankly inappropriate. [audience laughter] It's like anxiety through the roof. So, I make it my life's mission to keep this generation of nano puppy alive. It turns out that is a 24-hour day job, because every time it gets hungry or sleepy, it beeps. So, it's like all night all whatever, it's just beeping at me. 

 

My parents are starting to notice that I am not sleeping well. I'm telling my friends that I'm sick, so I don't have to like go outside and play with them, so I can take care of nano puppy. I'm lying to my teacher. I'm basically telling my teacher, “I got to go pee every 30 minutes, because I can hear nano puppy in my locker beeping.” [audience laughter] I go out to take care of him. But God, I love him. It's just heart strength. [audience laughter] And so, time passes, and nano puppy's getting stronger and healthier and happier and I'm just getting weaker and sicker and sadder. [audience laughter] We're just like one thing. He's sucking my soul out. My energy becomes his energy, and we're just like-- We're getting really close. I'm realizing that if nano puppy lives, I die. [audience laughter] 

 

So, along with all the life lessons that nano puppy teaches your children, it's a good toy, teaches them time management, responsibility, motherhood, basically. I am now firsthand experiencing the concept of infanticide, [audience laughter] which is another thing I should not have to know about forever. Even as an eight-year-old, it's just not a thing, but like the seed's been planted. I can't tell anybody about this. Most of all, I need to hide this from nano puppy, [audience laughter] because I've started to distance myself from nano puppy, just maybe leave it for a little bit longer. 

 

Oh, no. He notices. He gets hungry, or he gets sick, he gets loud. Everybody's noticing. So, I'm having to hide the fact. I obviously cannot let him starve to death. Everybody notices, because all my friends have them too, but they seem fine. I don't know what it was about this, whatever. [audience laughter] 

 

So, one day, I hook nano puppy to the belt loop of my jeans like I do, and I put those jeans in a laundry basket, [audience laughter] and I take that laundry basket to my mother, who is loading the washing machine. She doesn't say a word [audience laughter] and I don't say a word. [audience laughter] And 28 minutes later, when we pulled sopping wet nano puppy out of the washing machine, he was still alive. [audience laughter] So, we're pretending, we're like, “Oh, it's fine. Ha-ha, that's funny. Oh, God.” [audience laughter] 

 

My mom goes, like she lowers her voice because I don't know nano puppy can hear, she goes, “Why don't you dry it off by putting it in the freezer?” [audience laughter] I'm like, “Yeah.” So, the next morning, I go to check on nano puppy sadist, and he is still alive. [audience laughter] Except now, he is super angry. [audience laughter] And so, now the guilt is just crushing. Like, I can't function. I now copy. I now have to take care of my brain dead, angry spawn of Satan because of the karma. Anyway, so, I just continued to take care of it. 

 

We went camping a couple days later. He woke up in the middle of the night and was like, “I'm hungry.” [audience laughter] And my dad, just took it, ripped open the tent, threw that thing as far as he could. It landed in our campfire from whence it came. [audience laughter] So, I left it there. It's okay with me. I don't know, I guess the moral, the thing that I learned from this is don't lie about when you don't want something in your life anymore. Don't keep it going if it's not healthy and it's not good, and don't try and pretend it is and just throw that thing off a damn bridge. Thank you.