something to look forward to

There is a running joke in my house where friends will come by and ask my 6 year old if she received their email.  Her answer is always the same, “No, I don’t have a phone.”  It’s a pretty amazing response if you think about it.  As an adult I still think of my computer as the main source of my email even though I probably view 90% of it on my iPhone.  The iPhone has even taken over the baby’s mind as the only source of a hidden voice.  She has a toy flip phone but only picks up the iPhone to say hello because she’s never actually seen a flip phone in use.

As much as I see teenage girls ignore their parents while rudely texting from a restaurant dinner table, I actually think my eldest could benefit from a phone with this service.  It would correct the problem with her tone.   She can answer a question with perfect southern manners except for the fact that she’s sighing and rolling her eyes when she does it, something she’s obviously learned from the other children at school.  This shitty tone is often the reason behind her hasty launch from a bar stool.  If she could only respond with a text message we would never get a sense that she didn’t mean what she was saying.  She could send us a text from the basement informing us that she’s ever so sorry about leaving her bike in the driveway and as her mother and I looked at each other with a drunken 1950’s glaze in our eyes we would be protected from the fact that she typed the entire message with her middle finger while transferring porn to her ipod.  

Text messaging could become our poor man’s intercom.  It would almost certainly eliminate the long winded pre teen explanations of why Scotty can’t come to her birthday party because he talks to Cameron more than he does her.  Those conversations are easier spoken than typed and by not having to listen to them I can spare her my sighs and eye rolling.