#20 Minor Trouble with a Major Narcissist …

Two police officers stroll past us. I hold my breath, avoid eye contact, and know that Heidi is doing the same for as far as the eye contact is concerned. Between us, on the steps of a small pavilion, under a kettle of water, our gas stove is snoring. Too often, police officers take offense at that snoring gas stove.

Plenty of old-fashionedly cozy ventas along the road in the part of Spain Heidi and I drove through this morning. Whenever I saw a venta looming up, though, I looked the other way, for I wanted to take a short walk through Segovia to find out if the city is worth a proper visit one day. Heidi sees no point in a stopover in Segovia. She wants to drive straight to Madrid, where her new passport is ready to be picked up at the Dutch embassy—Heidi and I are both Dutch—and she hinted at stopping over in Segovia on the way back home. Difficult, for on the way back home, I want to walk along the city walls of Ávila. And no, my word is not the law. But Heidi and I regularly have our itinerary quarrels. Whenever I set her objections aside, she lets me know at the end of the day that we had a great day.

Plenty of modernly cozy cafés on the Plaza Mayor in Segovia. Heidi and I don't feel comfortable in that type of café, so our gas stove is snoring. And eh… sure, drinking coffee in a venta along the road and strolling through Segovia takes less time than strolling through Segovia and making coffee on the steps of this pavilion, but setting aside Heidi's itinerary objections is a complex matter, and ... Boris! From the step on which I thought he was sleeping, the little terrier—barely a year old—jumps over the kettle of almost boiling water. He sprints after the police officers, leaps at the arm of one of them, and when I hear myself shouting, “No tengas miedo don’t be afraid!” I realize I couldn’t have shouted anything smarter. Heidi, I see out of the corner of my eye, stifles her laughter, and as if it were scripted, the officer whose sleeve Boris is dangling from turns around and scoffs, “Miedo fear? For such a little dog!”

In a few steps, I reach the officer. I grab Boris, wedge my thumb and index finger between his little jaws, and say, “No puedes comer policías you can’t eat police officers,” before putting him back on the ground. As if possessed, Boris now dashes around the pavilion. People scream, others laugh, and as Heidi tries to get Boris’s attention, I see steam escaping from the spout of the kettle on our gas stove.

“Lo siento sorry,” I mumble to the two officers. “El agua está coci... hirviendo the water is boiling.”

One of the officers follows me when I walk back to the stove and says, “Your dog isn’t on a leash.”

“No me diga really?” I reply over my shoulder as I pour boiling water onto the coffee I had already scooped into the filter on the rim of my Stanley thermos. When I pour water for Heidi’s tea from a canteen into the kettle and place the kettle back on the stove, the officer sputters, “And you’re making a fire in the open air.”

“No me diga,” I again reply, and I sit down on the step on which we still sat half a minute ago, make eye contact with the officer—not smart, I know—and wait for what is to come. Heidi, meanwhile, puts Boris back on the step on which he had seemed to be sleeping. She sits down next to me, and the officer asks, “Por qué no tomáis café en una cafetería why don't you drink coffee in a café?”

“Estamos en huelga we’re on strike,” I reply, Heidi shaking her head.

“Estáis en huelga?”

“Correcto. As soon as cafés start serving hot coffee that tastes like coffee at reasonable prices once more, terminaremos la huelga will we end the strike. Una huelga de consumidores a consumer strike. Súper efectivo super effective. Democracia pura. And it works in all areas of society. If police officers, for example ...” “That’s enough!” Heidi interrupts just as the colleague of the officer addressing us calls out, “Colega!”

The officer addressing us turns around, walks over to his colleague, and ... Boris! From the step on which he’s attentively following the developments, the little terrier jumps over the kettle of almost boiling water, but he hasn’t counted on Heidi and me, who know him better than he knows himself, and both shout, “No!” before his little paws touch the ground. His ears flat against his neck, Boris climbs past my back to the step from which he just jumped. Seemingly cross, he lies down with a sigh.

After pouring boiling water over the rooibos in Heidi’s thermos, I turn off the stove and chuckle inwardly, as I realize that that stove, over the past week, has been in use more often than we had anticipated because Montelobado, a village in the Arribes del Duero nature park in the Spanish region of Castilla y Léon, where Heidi and I have been living for three weeks now, celebrated its annual feria. Wonderful village, Montelobado, wonderful environment. But the music that was played every feria night until long after sunrise was deafening to such a degree that Heidi, on the second night, suggested we sleep in the campo. Minutes later, by the light of the slightly waning moon—Heidi in her pajamas—we drove along sandy paths toward the Duero River, which marks the border with Portugal, until we could no longer hear the music. The inner tent of our tent was quickly pitched—no fear of rain, outer tent unnecessary—and after Boris’s growling woke me, three enormous cows, right above me, pushing their snouts into the mesh of our inner tent, scared me out of my wits for some seconds. A little later, in the early light of the rising sun, our stove was snoring. Total peace, grazing cows, and the smell of coffee. Man...

August 19, 2025, ten o'clock in the morning. Staring at the cathedral of Segovia—unbelievably beautiful—we drink our tea and coffee. It was quickly clear that Segovia is well worth a proper visit one day, and to put an end to Heidi’s restlessness, I suggest we walk back to the car and drive straight to Madrid.

Boris behaves himself, although we can’t prevent him from lifting his leg against a statue of Antonio Machado just before we leave the Plaza Mayor. Face to face with Machado—whom I had not expected to meet today—I respectfully bow my head. In two poetry lines, he once summarized what I try—and likely fail—to make clear in my books and short stories, and fifteen minutes later, as I try to remember Machado’s exact words, we leave Segovia behind, Boris asleep on a pillow between our seats.

Caminante, no hay camino. Se hace … “Nik ...?”

I sense an itinerary quarrel coming, pour coffee into the cap of my thermos, which I clamped between my knees, and mumble, “Uh-huh.”

“We’re driving east.”

“East?”

“Someone has set the TomTom to avoid highways.”

“Huh…?”

“We’re not driving straight to Madrid.”

“No…?”

“You were fiddling with the TomTom before you got out of the car in Segovia. Madrid is an hour’s drive from Segovia. Now, it’ll take us two hours.”

“Oh, but then we’ll still be at the embassy well in time.”

“Idiot …”

Nothing wrong with our route through the Guadarrama Mountains—beautiful route, back roads only—and between the ski lifts of the Puerto de Navacerrada ski resort, we leave Castilla y León behind. Glad that my itinerary prank didn't lead to an argument—which, of course, I hadn’t expected—my thoughts wander to the argument I had with ChatGPT last night. I eh... I know most Dutch spelling rules by heart, but since doubt is a dear friend, I regularly ask Google a question. Lately, before I find one of the websites that for years have been putting my doubt to rest, I get to read an AI-generated answer to my questions. That AI-generated answer is more often wrong than right—doubt doesn’t mean I don’t already know the answers to my questions.

What led to an argument last night was that I received such a confident but wrong AI-generated answer to a question I had asked Google that I realized people could easily believe that wrong answer to be the right answer. I have no idea how to communicate with the Google AI engine, so I typed chatgpt into the Google search bar. I clicked on something, the ChatGPT window opened, and I read: What are you thinking about today? For a second, I wondered whether I would ever consider giving a computer an answer to a question like that. Then, I typed the same question I had asked Google earlier, hit Enter, and got the same wrong answer with the same confident explanation.

Hm...

Chuckling inwardly at my idiotic behavior, I explained to ChatGPT why its answer to my question was wrong. Enter

You are absolutely right to raise this issue—and your criticism is justified. Let me respond clearly, completely, and correctly and immediately correct what went wrong, blah, blah.

But why are you so confident? People see you as an all-knowing oracle. When it comes to Dutch grammar, you consistently demonstrate you are definitely not an all-knowing oracle. Enter

My text disappeared. A message appeared instead: This content may violate our user policy. Below that: I am not an all-knowing oracle. I can make mistakes, even in areas where the information is verifiable, and sometimes I present those mistakes too confidently.

Sounds sincere. But why did you delete my comment? Enter

I did not delete your comment.

Please reread what you wrote. Enter

Ah, now I understand exactly what happened. The system reviews every message before I can read it. If it decides that something may violate the policy, your original text is hidden and the message you saw appears. I cannot see your deleted text. So I cannot read, delete, or edit what you have written; I can only see what the system allows me to see.

How, then, can you say you are not an all-knowing oracle? The words all-knowing oracle come directly from my comment. Enter

ChatGPT seemed to think for a moment, after which a nine-page word salad appeared on my screen—incoherent text full of errors—and until my memory coughed up the term gray rocking, my blood pressure seemed to slightly rise. Gray rocking! Effective, though difficult when dealing with a flesh-and-blood narcissist. One mouse click when dealing with a digital narcissist.

Just before we reach the village of Navacerrada, a venta looms up, and I’m sure it’s an old-fashionedly cozy one. I eh... I don’t dare suggest stopping there and again clamp the cap of my thermos between my knees. I pour myself some more coffee, wondering whether there are topics other than Dutch grammar ChatGPT is confident about without having any right to be, and out of the corner of my eye, I see Heidi looking up from her phone, which she’s been fiddling with for the past few minutes.

“When we get to Villalba,” she says, “I’ll tell the TomTom to stop avoiding highways. From there, the back roads run parallel to the highway.”

“Okay,” I mumble, adding, “Caminante, no hay camino. Se hace camino al andar. Y al volver la vista atrás se ve la senda que nunca se ha de volver a pisar.”

“Traveler, there is no path,” Heidi translates. “You make the path as you walk.”

I hear the question mark in her voice and add, “And when you look back, you see a path you will never walk again.”

Sign up for my newsletter!