What’s the coolest thing you’ve ever found (and kept)?

I’m Monica—resident normal mom in a very not-normal family. My husband works in IT and just happens to be a wizard, my kids are learning to control their powers (emphasis on learning), and our cat is technically my husband’s familiar but acts more like my boss. These are my stories from the front lines of magical motherhood.

So, I was wandering through a thrift store one Saturday — you know, that magical land where time stops, and suddenly you’re emotionally attached to a cracked mug from 1987 — when I found it: a dusty, old typewriter with a tag that read “$10 – haunted?”

Now, most people would take that as a warning. I took it as a challenge.

I didn’t need it. I already have a perfectly functional laptop and a husband who can literally reboot the universe if the Wi-Fi goes down. But something about this typewriter felt right. It had weight. Character. Probably a few crumbs from 1973. So I brought it home, cleaned it up, and gave it a spot on my desk between my coffee mug and my half-finished ideas for TV pilots that will probably never get made but are very fun to daydream about.

The first time I tried typing on it, the keys jammed and printed a random string of letters that looked like a demon’s password. My husband said it was a “mechanical hiccup.” Clark, our cat familiar, stared at it like it owed him money. I decided to ignore both of them and keep typing.

Now, it’s my favorite thing in the house. There’s something grounding about the clack of keys that don’t autocorrect my rambling thoughts or judge my overuse of parenthesis. It’s completely analog and maybe slightly cursed — which, honestly, makes it fit in perfectly around here.

So yes, the coolest thing I ever found and kept is a possibly haunted typewriter. It hasn’t started typing on its own yet, but if it ever does, I just hope it writes something with good dialogue.