Texting and other things I don’t get
It used to be if you got busted for passing a note in class, the teacher made you read it aloud to the class.
Made a fellow think twice before sending a steamy little missive to one’s prospective prom date.
In an effort to be an “engaged father,” I attempted to share with the teenage daughter some of the pitfalls her father faced back in the day. It was a simple attempt at “normalizing” her feelings of teenage angst.
Certainly more humane than my standard reply to an outbreak of such angst: “Been it, done it, seen it, surf it. Got the T-shirt.”
My recitation of my teenage mortification, however, drew but a blank look from the Princess of Popular Culture.
“You wrote it on a piece of paper? Dad, that’s so lame. How uncool.
“Did you purposefully intend to humiliate her? Why didn’t you text her?”
To text, I was to learn, meant to send a text message from your cell phone to a friend’s, using the number pad to spell out the message.
After a brief tutorial from the 16-year-old, I sent my first text to her older brother. It took a while to hit the correct keys the proper number of times to get the right letter. Which caused me to wonder was this any vast improvement over paper and pencil when it takes 5 minutes to compose six words?
“Oh, Dad,” she huffed, taking the phone from my hand and in a blaze of thumbs composed and sent an opus to her other older brother. (The gist of which was, “Can you believe how lame and old our father is?” To which both boys replied in the affirmative.)
I’m not the only one to have been caught off guard by this latest technological leap forward.
“Teachers are becoming more and more suspicious when they see an attentive-appearing student with both hands under the desk,” Northmont Superintendent Gale Mabry said.
“Nine times out of 10, the student is texting.”
Which makes for an interesting world. Because they are not texting just one person. With a single push of a button, a teen can text every kid on their contact list — literally hundreds at a time.
Which is a mixed blessing.
You could formulate a revolution, plan a protest, organize a study group or spread rumor quickly and efficiently.
Luckily, we are craftier than our children. Not necessarily smarter, but more experienced in the ways of the nasty ol’ world.
The press of a button can also alert parents that the Jones will be out of town this weekend. So if Mikey tells his parents he’s going to hang at Jeff Jones’ on Friday night, he’s busted.
Many cell phones also can be used as tracking devices. A suspicious parent (yes, I know I’m being redundant) with a properly equipped cell phone can check to see if trustworthy child is in fact at the movies and not at the mall.
This sort of generational battle has been going on for ages. Only the technology has changed.
It is, however, intimidating to see the daughter watching TV while her thumbs are racing over the phone’s keypad sending out messages to her social network.
“Teens such as our daughter are charismatics,” the wife said.
Huh?
“They speak in thumbs, silly.”
Permalink | Comments (1) | Post your comment | Categories: Random musings
Comments
By margo
January 31, 2008 9:55 PM | Link to this
Nice post, Doug. I had an eye-opening experience in August when my 16-year-old niece visited from Iowa with her family for a week. She is a very smart and sweet girl but she did not stop texting the ENTIRE time. Couldn’t believe it. Found it sad that she was more interested in texting a bunch of friends back in Iowa than talking to her grandparents who she sees at most once a year. Someday she’ll regret that time wasted. Meanwhile, I am determined to not let my young son fall into that texting trap when he gets older. No way.