Two weeks ago, I won a subscription to Tweenland! I have never been so popular; never knew 58 texts could arrive in five minutes. That’s 5.17 texts a second.
Emojis, photos, videos, shorthand, it was a potpourri of communication for all learning styles.
“Uhhh, Miss C, why do I suddenly have a million texts?”
She innocently picked her head off the couch. “Oh, I gave my friends your phone number.”
“58 messages.” I held up my phone. “I have 58 messages.”
“Ooh, can I see?” Miss C leaned across and took my phone.
Cue the slow claps.
Nicely played youngest one, nicely played.
When I suggested she give her friends our phone number, I thought ‘our’ phone number was the landline.
Silly Mama, landlines are for telemarketers and scammers.
How fast technology changes.
How quickly the young ‘uns reverted to their grandparents’ days of party lines.
“You’re only getting that many messages because there are eight people on one chat and six on the other.”
Thank goodness for the ‘mute’ button.
This morning, iMessage is sitting at 173 unread texts. Yes, you read that right. Never mind that I got Miss C to clear the phone, my phone, at 5:30 last night. Twelve hours, 173 texts and none of them are for me.
Welcome to Tweenland.
But you have two teenagers already, you say. Shouldn’t you have known better?
There were rumours, cautionary tales from the crypt of motherhood; mothers who’d willingly given out their numbers and suffered the same fate, but no, Miss Q and Miss S at twelve weren’t this enterprising and those were other mothers.
Sure, there were fainting couch moments, when they would melodramatically stagger into the living room, back of their hand to forehead declaring, “I can’t talk to my friends.”
But they quickly gave up the ghost, preferring to emailing friends through Google Classroom over using our landline. Even though “no one checks their Google Classroom email,” insert eyeroll emoji.
A mere seven years ago I didn’t have a secondary phone. Even with kids underfoot, I didn’t need it. When I was out no one could find me, no one needed to know what I did.
And now I live like I’m on Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, the television in the bathtub and phone in the car part at least.
My dreams of roaming the world untethered have vaporised.
I’m sure my parents are having a good chortle. In 1991, when I was thirteen, they gave me my own phone line for Christmas: a section of telephone cord wrapped with yarn and a note congratulating me on breaking them.
What a glorious gift: freedom to chitchat long into the night, to call boys and hang up.
It was a life lesson: all that time wasted, hoping garçons would return the favour. Bah.
Like the chorus of our grad song by 10,000 Maniacs predicted, but now in past tense: those were days, but also, these are days.
Now that Miss C’s reaping the rewards of a mother who’s gone soft in her old age, will she get an all-hours access pass to my phone, or her own phone eight months early?
Ah, no. In our family, it’s wait until grade eight and your thirteenth birthday.
Neither she, nor the hundreds of texts from Tweenland are smoking out this bear.
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