Texting Your Brains Out

Over a year ago, after I took the last of the heat for "not delivering messages" to my stepdaughter, The Mother got her a cell phone so that she would have 24/7 access to said stepdaughter. Spouse-man held to his guns, though, that she did not need a cell phone and would not get one until she got into high school. The end result? She was given instructions to not bring it to our house when she came over. She honored that, for the most part. Then she got into high school … then she got a phone plan that encourages texting over actually talking by giving more text minutes then talk minutes. I don’t get it personally, but Paul Harvey suggested that in the future we’d evolve to lose our voices and grow more fingers. I digress.

It’s an interesting thing about teens and cell phones; they become fused together and meld as one. She is rarely without the thing, and her fingers are busily flying over her little keys. Can they get Thumb Carpal Tunnel Disease?  I notice that she acknowledges some down time while a fork and spoon are in her hand.

Here are the things that really irritate me the most with a) Teens with cell phones b) My teen with a cell phone c) My teen with an infinite amount of friends d) My teen with The Mother Bungee with a texting cell phone:

* When talking to her, while I was cooking dinner, about her school counselor, she gets a call by vibration and suddenly I hear a "Hello?" in the middle of my sentence. How rude is that?

* While Spouse-man was tucking her in, the cell phone vibrates from under her pillow. Um, it’s bedtime folks.

* Every time Spouse-man tried to call her over the week with all her other activities going on, mysteriously he got her voicemail. Hmmm, why is it she seems to be on cue when everyone else calls?

* I seriously wonder how much her mother is talking to her during "our" time. Ok, now we get into that touchy subject of whether we are keeping The Mother from her.

* I have personally experienced that mysterious Bermuda Triangle of cellular communication where she claims she’s been waiting on me for an hour to pick her up and has called numerous times. Nothing on my missed calls list, sure about that?

* I stepped out the front door where she was sitting and she quickly put it in her back pocket. Okay, you caught my eye - What’s there to hide?

* I glanced out the front door where she and her dad were sitting on the front porch and she was multi-tasking; talking to her dad while texting someone else. How rude is that?

I would love to find a book by Miss Manners on the topic of cell phone use and give to both my stepdaughters. With my older one, I finally practiced just shutting up after getting rudely interrupted in the middle of talking, with her perky "Hello?" to her caller that I didn’t know was coming in. And you know what? She never comes back with "Sorry, please continue telling me what you were saying."

What’s with these kids?

Comments

[J]

I know full-grown adults who are just as bad---especially realtors

[Stephanie]

It's true. I think people in general are just TOO connected. We've lost that sense of personal interaction, of general courtesy. We're tuned in, all the time. Maybe you could make your home cell-phone free between the hours of 6 and 8pm or something. I would consider setting up some sort of boundary, so you don't go crazy from the rudeness.

[Tulips4me]

It is so hard to find the middle ground when it comes to teens, technology and The Mother!