Our bathroom currently contains a Post-it note on the mirror explaining the precise Siri phrases required to operate the shower automation correctly.
This is not because the automation is especially complicated.
Nor because the phrases themselves are particularly difficult.
The invocation is:
“Hey Siri, start my shower.”
Which is perfectly human phrasing.
The shower, in this context, is not a plumbing fixture.
It is:
warmth,
bright lights,
weather information,
music loud enough to hear through running water,
and the official commencement of the morning ritual.
The house understands this surprisingly well.
The benediction is:
“Hey Siri, reset the bathroom.”
Which Joy refuses to say.
Instead she insists on:
“Reset the shower.”
Which is emotionally disturbed.
The shower is not a room.
It is:
a fixture,
a plumbing delivery system,
or perhaps an activity, but certainly not the environmental state container being modified by the automation.
Humans reset:
rooms,
systems,
environments,
devices.
Not:
“the shower.”
What would resetting the shower even mean?
Returning the water pressure to factory defaults?
Performing some sort of minor hydraulic exorcism?
Before the Post-it note solution, I would hear this linguistic heresy from elsewhere in the apartment and simply yell:
“BATHROOM.”
Not conversationally. More the way medieval clergy may once have corrected doctrinal error.
But modern domestic technology creates these strange moments where the house slowly trains humans into its own ontology.
The invocation may remain experiential and human:
“Start my shower.”
But eventually administration returns.
And administration, as always, requires proper naming conventions.
The automation understands the logic and structure of:
Reset The Bathroom.
Meanwhile Joy continues attempting to negotiate with the Household Spirit using emotionally intuitive nouns.
And so the Post-it note remains attached to the mirror.
Not because the ritual has to make sense to non-believers.
But because repeated ritual eventually produces acceptable outcomes without requiring animal sacrifice.
Anyway.
Go in Peace.