We squabbled over it for weeks before I finally gave in. My teenage daughter was relentless in her campaign for a cell phone. “All my friends have one”, was the first argument that she tried.
She would have to do better than that.
“What if I am driving in a snowstorm and slide off in the ditch?” Mariah ask with a smug look on her face, convinced this would win me over.
“You won’t be driving in a snowstorm,” I replied, trusting my answer.
“You will always know where I am!” was the next thing she offered.
“I know where you are anyway…don’t I?” I shot back, using just the right tone of voice that caught Mariah’s attention.
This conversation was not going the way she intended.
“What if I have a flat tire and I’m stranded on the side of the road?” This is the argument that convinced her dad and brought him over to her side. But me, I told her “unexpected things happen, and you have to handle it when it does.”
I wasn’t making this easy for her.
These were the early days of cell phones, before texting and Tik Tok and social influencers. Cell phones were simply telephones in your pocket. I would see kids at ballgames walking around with phones hanging on their purses or clipped to their belt loops. They would get calls in the bleachers and driving in their car two blocks from home. I heard phones ringing in the grocery store, in the theater, and at the mall.
What is everyone talking about?
Life wasn’t always this way. I remember when we listened to music in our cars and rejoiced in the fact that we were unreachable. I never imagined carrying a phone in my pocket that would ring while I was shopping, in a movie, or at a ballgame.
Can’t it wait until I’m home?
So, if it’s not an emergency, why did my teenage daughter need a cell phone? After I shot down all of her reasoning, a desperate Mariah blurted out the one thing she believed would convince me. “What if I pay my own cell phone bill?”
OK, now she had my attention.
For the complete column, see this week’s edition of the Centralia Fireside Guard.
