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Christmas 2013
It’s been Will’s idea to get Hopper a smartphone for Christmas. El nonchalantly drops the small present into his lap while Hopper sits in his recliner, the fireplace warm at his back.
“Open it.”
Hopper turns the wrapped box over in his hands. “This from you?” he asks, looking at his daughter.
“From all of us,” Will adds, nodding toward El and Jonathan on either side of him on the couch.
“Hmm.”
“Just open it!” El groans impatiently, rolling her eyes.
“Yeah, yeah,” the man grumbles, tearing the wrapping paper apart. He regards the packaging with suspicion, then stares at his three grown kids as if they’ve lost their minds.
“Is that…?”
“A phone!” El calls out excitedly.
“The hell do I need this for?”
“Everyone needs a phone, Hop,” Jonathan says. They all have one, except for Joyce and Hopper. At least one of them should have a phone, the kids have agreed on that much.
Joyce finally joins them, having just ushered the grandkids outside to try the new sled she and Hop got them. Not that they needed asking. The kids were so delighted, they were out the door before the adults could count to ten.
Hopper, on the other hand, is not.
“I don’t.”
“Well, what if there’s an emergency and you need to call somebody?” Will asks.
“I don’t need to. I’m a cop. I’m the one getting called when there’s an emergency.”
Hopper crosses his arms while Joyce rests a hand on his shoulder.
“Honey, you haven’t been chief for years.”
“Just because I’m retired doesn’t mean I’m not a cop anymore,” the man mumbles. “I could go back anytime if I wanted to.”
“I’d like to see you try,” Joyce snorts.
El intervenes before Hopper can answer, snatching the box from him and finally taking out the phone.
“Let’s just try it out.”
She frees the phone from its packaging and pushes it into her dad’s unwilling hands. He just stares at the thing in his hands with hostility.
“I don’t like it,” Hopper says plainly.
Jonathan chuckles. “You haven’t even turned it on.”
“Here, that’s the power button. Press it until the screen lights up,” he continues more softly.
The siblings spend the next hour showing him how to make a call, how to send a message and how to use the camera. The problem with teaching Hopper anything is that he remembers about half of it. So they don’t even touch the internet yet, there’s no need to confuse him further.
El sends him a message, and Hopper is tasked with finding the right app and the right person to read it.
After a few wrong taps, half from confusing mail with messages, half caused by his big thumb, he manages to open El’s chat.
Hopper squeezes his eyes together, clearly trying to make out what El has sent him.
“We can make the font bigger,” Will remarks carefully.
“It’s fine.”
Will knows it isn’t. He makes a mental note to change it later, in secret.
EL: hi hop ♥️
“How do I answer?”
El shows him, but too fast for Hopper to follow. So Will does it again, slower this time.
HOPPER: hi kid this is hop
“You don’t have to say it’s you.” Will points out. He’s sure Hopper won’t know next time he texts someone, but Will tries anyway. “Your name’s always at the top.”
Hopper’s eyes are still focused on the phone, Will isn’t sure he listened to anything he’d just said.
“Why is there a heart?”
This half confirms Will’s assumption.
“Hm?” Will scratches his head. What heart is he talking about?
“El’s message. It got a heart.”
Will leans closer to Hopper to look at the phone as well. “Oh, that’s an emoji.”
Hopper makes a noise of acknowledgement and keeps staring at the heart. Will observes his stepdad silently, trying to read him.
“Do you… do you want to send an emoji too?” Will points at the button with the smiley face, urging the man to tap on it.
“There’s all kinds of emojis,” he explains, giving Hopper time to choose one. However, Hopper's already decided which one he wants to send El.
HOPPER: ♥️
HOPPER: please buy some milk. love you
WILL: …this is will.
WILL: did you want to text mom?
HOPPER: yes
WILL: do you know how?
HOPPER: yes
HOPPER: no
WILL: should i write her for you?
HOPPER: no i got it
WILL: ok
HOPPER: yes please
WILL: ok
WILL: got it
HOPPER: thanks
HOPPER: love you
Christmas 2014
Joyce is even worse than Hopper with a phone. She didn’t want a phone anyway. Her reasoning was that she had Hopper and he had a phone, so she could just use his if she ever needed to.
No matter that she couldn’t operate it in the first place.
But Jonathan has decided it’s time for her to have her own, after the Thanksgiving incident where they’d searched for each other at the airport for hours. A simple call could’ve saved them both from the trouble.
“So how do I call someone?”
Jonathan and Joyce sit at the living room table, soft Christmas music playing in the background. He’s just finished setting up the device. Joyce has mostly watched, asking a thousand questions along the way.
“Go to contacts,” Will says casually, sprawled on the couch with his own phone, scrolling through what Jonathan guesses is Facebook.
“Okay,” Joyce whispers, her eyes darting over the screen. “Okay,” she repeats, still looking.
Will sighs, groans, and gets up from the couch, dropping into the chair beside his brother.
“See the icon with the little person,” Jonathan starts. “That’s it.”
“That’s a person?” their mother asks, tilting her head at the circle and rounded rectangle that’s supposed to be a human.
“Just open the app, Mom,” Will whines.
“Okay, okay.”
Jonathan has already saved all the important numbers, marking Hopper, Will, El, and himself as favorites. In theory, it should take two steps to make a call.
For Joyce though, it takes about eight.
“It’s ringing!” their mother calls out nervously, not entirely sure she’s done it right.
“Is he not picking up?”
“He probably can’t find the right button again,” Will whispers to Jonathan, chuckling. A second later, the ringtone stops.
“Hop, hey, it’s me!”
“I’m calling you with my new phone!” Joyce shouts into the microphone. “Isn’t that amazing?”
Before they can start a full conversation, Jonathan cuts in. “Good. It works. You can hang up now.”
“Sorry, I gotta go,” Joyce excuses herself before abruptly hanging up.
“Let’s try texting next.”
Jonathan shows her where the message app is.
“Why’d you call me?” Hopper asks, coming down the stairs.
She looks up from her phone for a second. “Oh, we were just testing how it works, honey.”
Hopper throws his arms in the air. “I was in the middle of a very important game of Go Fish!”
Ignoring him, Jonathan and Will continue to explain to her how to text a person.
“I was winning, too,” he mumbles, sitting down beside his wife, still ignored by everyone at the table.
Jonathan is in the middle of explaining how the keyboard on a touchscreen works.
Curious about it, Hop looks over her shoulder. “What’cha doin’?”
“I’m writing to you.”
Well. She tries. Jonathan doesn’t dare say that out loud.
She begins typing, but stops with a sigh of frustration.
“Why is it saying waiting?”
Jonathan leans forward so he can see what she’s written. “It probably corrected you.”
Joyce scoffs. “I didn’t ask it to correct me!”
“Well, that’s what it does.”
“Well, that’s stupid,” Joyce blurts out. Hopper nods in agreement.
Will rolls his eyes while Jonathan turns off her autocorrect in the settings, done with the discussion.
Joyce still hesitates. Will begs her to finally write a message and send it. After accidentally sending a voicemail to Hopper, she finally gets it.
JOYCE: hi hop this is joyce writing you
“I did it!”
“That’s great, Mom.” Jonathan mumbles, clearly jaded by the whole interaction.
Out of the corner of his eye, Jonathan sees Hopper typing on his phone, very slowly. But soon enough, Joyce’s phone buzzes.
“What happened? Why did it make that sound?” she asks, startled.
Her phone buzzes again.
Jonathan’s eyes move between his mother and Hopper. “It means you got a new message.”
“How can I see it?”
Jonathan shows her.
HOPPER: hey joyce
HOPPER: youre beautiful
Joyce giggles when she reads Hopper’s answer, then turns to her sons. “Okay, who’s next?”
“You wanna send another one?” Will’s voice sounds tired, a little wary. He isn’t sure his mom knows entirely what she’s doing.
She nods proudly.
“El’s still upstairs, text her to come down already.” In Will’s opinion, it’s time for El to help. He and Jonathan have done their duty.
Expectantly, the brothers watch their mom tapping on the screen, disoriented and lost. Jonathan hints that the icon is a speech bubble, which at least gets her into the app.
They are a bit surprised that she finds El quickly, but she still struggles to type the actual text.
“I think I sent my voice again,” Joyce calls out in panic.
Hopper shakes his head in disappointment. “Stop doing that, Joyce.”
Like he’s any better.
Offended, the woman gasps. “It’s not like I did it on purpose!”
Before the discussion can escalate, El’s voice screams down from the first floor.
“It’s okay, I liked it!”
Joyce shoots Hopper a satisfied look before turning toward the stairs.
“Thank you, honey!” she shouts.
HOPPER: kid
HOPPER: how do i send a photo
JONATHAN: you tap the plus icon
HOPPER: what
JONATHAN: the plus icon. it’s next to the typing field
HOPPER: speak english
JONATHAN: the rectangle where you WRITE a MESSAGE. there’s a PLUS on the RIGHT.
HOPPER: where
Jonathan sends a screenshot with the plus circled red.
HOPPER: how did you do that
JONATHAN: with the plus icon…
HOPPER: i see it
Hopper sends a picture of a squirrel in their backyard.
JONATHAN: good job!
JONATHAN: who did you want to send it to?
HOPPER: el
HOPPER: its mr fibbly jr
Christmas 2015
Somehow, every time Will visits his parents, he ends up providing tech support.
Even on Christmas, he isn’t spared. Everyone else is already asleep or cleaning up after the big meal. Except for Will, who missed his chance to flee.
“It’s not working,” Hopper says, sitting across from him at the dining table, his phone lying untouched between them.
“What’s not working?”
Hopper gestures vaguely. “It.”
“What did you do?”
“I didn’t do anything.”
Will waits.
“I tried to write a message.” Hopper exhales. “Doesn’t work.”
Will sighs at the complete lack of useful information. “Give me the phone.”
Will cringes as he enters the pin to unlock his stepdad’s phone. There are three different weather apps installed, the browser has at least fifty tabs open simultaneously, and the photo app is full of pictures of Hopper’s thumb.
He notices the problem when he looks at the settings. “You turned on flight mode.”
Hopper looks at him, eyes blank. “I don’t know what that means.”
“Means no internet.”
No reaction.
“No internet, no signal,” Will says in the most patient tone he can still bring up. “So your message can’t be sent out to the world.”
“Not the world. Just Joyce.”
“Same thing.”
“So, how do I make it send again?”
“Here, I’ll show you.”
He opens the settings, navigates to the connections and turns off the slider with the little airplane symbol.
“You’re going too fast,” Hopper says, his face pinched with frustration.
“If I go slower, it’ll take longer,” Will grits out, already agitated.
“I’m fine with that.”
Will pauses. Then he looks up from the phone, straight to his stepdad. “You won’t remember it anyway.”
Hopper indignantly stares back. “I can learn.”
Will wants to say, no, no you can’t. Instead he just sighs and starts the process again, this time slower, so Hopper can follow.
Then he lets him try on his own.
“You can also just slide down the quick menu from above,” Will explains. “See?” He shows the man the open menu on his own phone. “That’s the faster way.”
He isn’t sure if Hopper is understanding anything, but he does seem to follow Will’s movements.
“How did you do that?” the man asks curiously.
“Do what?”
“The photo. The one with you and Josh.” Will’s face warms a little at the mention of his husband. He pushes the power button on his phone again, so he can see what Hopper had meant.
“Oh, you mean the lock screen?”
Hopper nods. “How do I do that?”
Will reaches out his hand wordlessly for his stepdad to hand over his phone. He opens the photo app again, scrolling through the sparse collection.
“What do you want to have as a picture?”
The man seems to think about that for a while, before coming to a conclusion.
“The photo Joyce gave me.”
“She GAVE you a photo?”
“Yeah.”
Will stares at his stepdad, trying to figure out what he means.
“You mean, she SENT you a picture.”
“That’s what I said.”
Will shakes his head, opening the chat with Joyce on Hopper’s phone. Instead of a photo, he’s greeted by something that makes his heart beat a little faster. It must be from a few weeks ago when Joyce visited him in Chicago.
HOPPER: hows will
JOYCE: doing fine
JOYCE: him and josh are coming on christmas
HOPPER: good
HOPPER: hows josh
JOYCE: also good
JOYCE: got a promotion
HOPPER: thats great
JOYCE: you alright
HOPPER: yeah
JOYCE: did you eat
HOPPER: leftover chili
JOYCE: again
HOPPER: it was there
JOYCE: dont stay up late
HOPPER: wont
JOYCE: gonna leave early tomorrow
HOPPER: drive safe okay
Will clears his throat, starting to scroll up in search of the photo Hopper has mentioned. He stops for a moment when he reaches an old photo of him and his siblings sitting on the porch of the cabin.
It must’ve been a few months after their return to Hawkins, with El’s hair being at shoulder length, wild and curly, still growing out. The photo is of surprisingly good quality. Jonathan must’ve worked his magic on it before sending it to their mom.
“This one.”
Will turns his head away from the screen, looking at his stepdad sitting across from him. He wants this photo on his lock screen?
“Yeah? You sure?”
“Yeah. I like it.”
“It’s old though.”
“Don’t have a newer one.” The man shrugs. “‘Sides, you guys didn’t change much.”
Will coughs at that. “Hop, we were still kids back then.”
“Still are. To me, anyway.”
Will makes a mental note to get Jonathan and El for a quick photography session soon. This picture really needs an update, so the old man remembers what his kids look like now.
EL created the group “Family 🙂”.
EL: ❤️
HOPPER: whats this
JONATHAN: family group chat
JOYCE: oh i see
JOYCE: everyone hello
HOPPER: why
WILL: so we don’t have to text separately.
HOPPER: i liked separately
WILL: it’s easier this way.
HOPPER: debatable
HOPPER: too many messages
WILL: like you get any messages other than from us
HOPPER: thats not the point
EL: it kind of is
JONATHAN: you don’t have to reply to everything.
HOPPER: good
HOPPER: then i wont
JOYCE: he will still read them
HOPPER: no i wont
EL: yeah you will