“Anyway, my grandmother came to visit,” she continued, glancing back over her shoulder at the painting. “I avoided her until we all sat down for dinner. And then she figured out the whole situation in, maybe, ten minutes, just by watching my face across the dinner table. I didn't say more than ten words—'Pass the tortillas.' I don't know how my face conveyed that information, or what kind of internal wiring in my grandmother's mind enabled her to accomplish this incredible feat. To condense fact from the vapor of nuance.”

As parents drift off to the sound some quaintly call typing, their children are deep inside multiple conversations with their “buddies,” pseudonymous pals listed vertically along one side of the screen. Pull a stealth P.O.S. (parent over shoulder) and you might catch a few screen alter egos — for instance, shebiscuit, kickflip10, latteladie, talkinghead88, Jesusraves, each with individualized sign-on sounds, audio cues reminiscent of the way each character in “Peter and the Wolf” is represented by its own instrument.