We may have been talking a little too much about politics in our house over the last few weeks. Just now, when I told Mr. 14 that I was writing about tonight’s dinner table discussion with friends – the US, Trump, tariffs, deportations, Signal – he rolled his eyes. “Everyone knows what you’re going to say.”

“What should I say instead?” I asked.

“Tell them that someone thought tariffs were a great idea,” he suggested. “Tell them that we had a big fight and we threw the person who thought tariffs are good into the backyard with the dogs.

“At least that will be different,” he added. “I mean, what Canadian thinks tariffs are good?”

So, um, yeah: that’s my 14-year-old’s take on Trump’s tariffs.

Back up two hours to the dinner discussion my son found so predictable. There, the 16-year-old daughter of a friend tried to fathom the Signal war planning fiasco. “Wait – what?” She squinted her eyes a little and looked at her mother and me like we were trying to pull a fast one. “They talked about bombing people in a group chat?” She paused and let that sink in. “Like, seriously? Grown men? Real bombs? In a *group chat*?” When we mentioned that they had accidentally invited a journalist and that some of them were outside the US, she was incredulous. “Do they even know how group chats work?”

Around the table, people talked about not buying fruit that came from the US, avoiding products they used to rely on, cancelling streaming services. The teen whose parent is cancelling streaming services was unimpressed, but consoled herself that “at least TikTok is Chinese.”

With that, we are treated to a TikTok video of NDP leader Jagmeet Singh demonstrating how he ties his turban while he talks about his Conservative opponent. (For the non-Canadians, the NDP is the furthest left of the three major Canadian political parties; we are having an election on April 28.) She calls this “hair porn” and we all watch, fascinated.

Not long after this, we piled into the living room to watch our movie. As we settled in, three families, four children, two dogs, I kept thinking of one of JD Vance’s lines from the leaked Signal chat, one which has been on repeat in my head, though not in the way he meant it. “I think we are making a mistake,” he wrote.

For once, I think the VP got it right. Maybe we should throw him in the backyard with the dogs.