The phone doesn’t ring. It vibrates. A single, sharp buzz against the kitchen counter that means only one thing. A notification from the app. The one that was supposed to make everything easier. My stomach does a familiar, cold flip. It’s never a simple ‘Running 9 minutes late.’ It’s never ‘Did you see the permission slip?’ It’s the digital equivalent of a certified letter, delivered with the sterile immediacy of a push notification.

I swipe open the screen. There it is. A 439-word treatise, timestamped to the second, on the mysterious disappearance of a left soccer cleat. It’s meticulously documented, referencing conversations from three weeks ago, implying a pattern of negligence, and it has, of course, been shared with legal counsel. All this, for a piece of smelly footwear that will almost certainly be found under a car seat within the hour. The app, with its clean interface and promise of streamlined communication, has become a courtroom where the trial never ends.

I should have known better. I’m the same person who spent a weekend trying to build a rustic, reclaimed wood bookshelf from a 9-step Pinterest guide. The pictures were beautiful. The instructions, so clear. The result