It’s February. That means I’m about to have two teenagers in my house. Sadie turns 13 next week. I feel official now as the parent of teenagers. The other night we had about twenty of them here for chicken tacos. I felt like Bill Cosby. He’s my inspiration these days. We’ve been watching a lot of old Cosby shows now that we have TiVo and while it was funny when I used to watch it as a kid, it is easily 100 times funnier now watching it as a parent. I’ve been thinking a lot about my parents and how they always just seemed old, like they knew exactly what they were doing when I was a teenager and I would have friends over. Now I’m wondering if they ever experienced the terror that I feel. If they did, I never noticed it. I wonder if my kids just think I’m old and I know what I’m doing? Cause I don’t. Not. At. All.
Of course, my parents didn’t have to deal with cell phones and Facebook.
We got our recent cell phone bill this week and I went through it just to check on things and make sure rules were being obeyed (no texting during school or after 10pm). While the rules were obeyed, I found some other things that were rather….interesting:
Chris and I both sent around 250 text messages last month
Callie and Sadie both sent around 3500 text messages last month
(!!!)
(???)
How is that even possible? And that’s just during the time they’re home from school and 10pm! If you figure there are eight texting hours on school days and twelve on the weekends, that gives them somewhere around 16,000 minutes they have available for texting. That means they send a text message once every 4.57 minutes, all day, every day. And that doesn’t even include the messages they receive.
(!!!)
No wonder they’re exhausted. That’s a lot to keep up with school, chores, homework, extra-curricular activities, getting enough sleep AND their full-time job of texting.
New rule at the Linebarger home: Cell phones go in the special cell phone locker the second they walk in the door from school. They can have them back when chores and homework are done.
I think the girls were actually relieved when we told them.
Fierce Peace 
Three cheers for you Les! Way to beat the system and be counter-culture.
I was thinking the other day about those good ole junior high and high school days and how I still have big boxes full of notes from everyone I ever knew. Most notes had the same old: “I’m in ________ class and I’m so bored. Do you still like _________? Did you watch _________ last night? Did you hear about ________?” etc.
But, even to this day I can’t bring myself to throw some of those notes away–a piece of me at that moment of time. I can look at a note with my name on it and exactly know who it’s from by the handwriting. I see the evolution of my handwriting and remember how I thought I was so mature and knew it all.
And what do teenagers today have? An inbox of texts sent and received and agile fingers.
Give me paper and pen any day–that’s what I say!
So, what are you doing next week? Oh, never mind… I’ll just text you :0)
LikeLike
You still have your notes from junior high? That’s …. I was gonna say impressive, but I’m afraid that’s not quite the right word. Wow.
Another memory-keeper that’s fading due to technology are photo albums. Hardly anybody actually prints and keeps pictures anymore. That makes me sad. I do my photo books. Granted, it’s not exactly the old-fashioned way, but it still works. Because I like to sit on a couch with my legs curled beneath me, thumbing through pages and remembering. It’s just not the same hitting the next arrow on a back-lit screen.
LikeLike
So you thought I was old? I’m not even old yet! But I still know what I’m doing. And you do too!
LikeLike