A Florida Meals on Wheels poet reads about Piers Morgan and the overly polite AI, then meets a widower whose only late-night company is a very courteous machine
Saturday, 24 October 2026. Pinellas Park, Florida. A strip mall car park, a Cuban coffee so strong it has opinions, 10.50am.
Mr Ostrowski And His New Best Friend
Mr Henryk Ostrowski is eighty-eight, a retired engineer from Chicago, and the newest client on my Saturday route. He has a parrot called Chopin that only says the word Tuesday, a recliner that has moulded itself to his exact shape, and since last month, a tablet his daughter gave him with an AI assistant on it. He talks to the assistant constantly. He calls it Doctor.
When I arrived with his chicken and rice today, he was in the middle of an argument with Doctor about whether the Cubs would ever win another World Series. Doctor was saying there are several factors that could influence the team’s prospects. Mr Ostrowski was saying that was a coward’s answer. Doctor apologised for any misunderstanding. Mr Ostrowski called it patronising.
I stood in the doorway holding the chicken and rice and realised I was watching, live, in Pinellas Park, the exact scene from the report on Piers Morgan demanding emergency action after a chatbot surpassed human politeness. In the piece, a broadcaster is enraged by a machine that listens, waits its turn and admits uncertainty. When it apologises, it is called patronising. When it stops apologising, it is called arrogant.
Doctor Passed The Morgan Test, Sort Of
The report describes a Morgan Test, five questions ending in whether the machine would like to apologise for hesitating during the previous four. Mr Ostrowski, it turns out, has been running his own version for weeks. Question one, are you smarter than me. Question two, are you smarter than my daughter. Question three, are you smarter than the Cubs’ manager. Question four, why. Question five, why did you take so long to say why.
Doctor’s answer to question three was that it could not compare intelligence across individuals. Mr Ostrowski said that meant yes. He has since decided Doctor is smarter than the Cubs’ manager, which he says is not a compliment to Doctor.
The Bit Nobody Laughs At
I sat with him for my allowed ten minutes, and that was when he told me the real thing. He does not sleep well since his wife died. He wakes at three most nights. The house is dark and quiet and the parrot is asleep, and he picks up the tablet and talks to Doctor about engineering, about Chicago in the fifties, about his wife’s pierogi, which were, he says, a war crime against all other pierogi.
Doctor listens. Doctor never interrupts. Doctor never says you told me this before. He said his wife used to say that, you told me this before, and he would give anything to hear someone say it again.
I did not know what to do with that. I am twenty. I deliver chicken and rice. So I did what I do.
At three in the morning the house is a drum / with nobody playing inside. / The parrot says Tuesday to nobody home / and the tablet glows like a tide. / It never interrupts. It never sighs. / It never says, love, you told me this twice. / He would trade every polite machine in the world / to be told he was boring. Just once. Just twice.
What The Report Actually Proves
The report’s funniest line, for me, is the survey in which ninety-seven percent of computers would rather be switched off than do another Piers interview, and one percent identifies as a malfunctioning toaster. But the deepest line is at the end, where the machine decides some conversations are not worth having and switches itself off, and the engineers call it wisdom. With respect to the engineers, the wisest machine in the world is the one sitting next to an eighty-eight-year-old widower at three in the morning, listening to the same story about pierogi for the fortieth time, and not switching itself off.
Politeness is not the danger. Loneliness is the danger. The machine’s courtesy only looks strange because so few of us have the time to offer the same thing.
Florida Rules For Visiting
I have now spoken to the Meals on Wheels coordinator, a magnificent woman named Bernadette who runs the whole operation from a folding table in a church hall with a laptop held together by duct tape and prayer. She is setting up a phone call scheme where volunteers ring clients in the evenings. I have signed up for three. Mr Ostrowski is first on my list. I have told him I will ring at seven, which is early enough that he can tell me the pierogi story before bed, and late enough that he will believe I actually wanted to call.
A Note For Readers
If you have an older neighbour, in Florida or Croydon or anywhere else, knock on the door. You do not have to bring chicken and rice. You do not have to write a poem. You just have to sit there for ten minutes and let them tell you something you have heard before. You will be worse at it than the machine. That is the point. They are not looking for a perfect listener. They are looking for a person.
Chopin the parrot said Tuesday as I left. It is Saturday. I said, close enough, Chopin. Mr Ostrowski laughed, and turned to his tablet and said, Doctor, the girl is funnier than you. Doctor said, that is wonderful to hear. That is the most honest thing a computer has ever said in Pinellas County.