good! brave!

I am not going to look up enough screenwriting idiom to do this properly, but please imagine: me, on the patio, in gardening clothes and a high vis jacket and a bike helmet, decanting a last few horrors into the compost caddy; Adam, the other side of the French window, in sensible office clothes, who has come to find me in mild dismay.

The dismay was because I had, earlier in the day, asked him to chase me out the house approximately three quarters of an hour earlier than This Scene Occurs. He had Just Remembered, prompted by my absence, and come to see if I still needed chasing.

I would like to be told-- (says I)

-- you are very good and very brave! (continues the Adam)

would you like to know why specifically? (says I)

... why specifically (says the Adam, with minor caution)

[INTERLUDE, in which I gesture at a Pile of Horrors that Isn't]

... you are VERY good and VERY brave (says the Adam, now awestruck)

Highly recommend demanding praise as a routine mode of engagement, obviously. The Additional Awe was extremely gratifying. (And even I managed to dodge the rain, so did not become soggy!)