My daughter’s birthday was this week. We bought her a cell phone — her first one. It’s a Tracfone; one where she pays for the minutes with her own money so she can learn the discipline of limiting her phone time. She was so happy that she cried. Then she gave me an unsolicited hug and told me she loved me.
Anyway (and here’s the part of this story that I wouldn’t care to try to explain to a visitor from the 19th century) my daughter spent the rest of the evening calling her friends on our land line to tell them she had a cell phone, then hanging up the land line and texting them on her cell phone even though the only topic of conversation was the fact that she now had a cell phone — something that could be far more thoroughly discussed on the land line.
And … we were informed that there is now a group of teenage girls scattered across northeastern Illinois who love us and think we’re the coolest parents ever.
So we’ve got that going for us anyway, which is nice.