Phone Etiquette...

No, this isn't a screed about stupid things people do on the phone (although, working in an office, I could expound on that for quite some time...). No, this is much worse.

TheBoy and BabyGirl G. have discovered the telephone. The end is near.

It's funny. Up until now, neither child has shown any interest in the telephone. Oh, sure, every once in a while the phone would ring and it would be one of their friends inviting them over to play (oh, I'm sorry, TheBoy is 10 now and wants me to change that to "chillax"...), which would result in 20 seconds of silence, 5 seconds of HeyTheBoydoyouwanttocomeoverandplaymydadwillbeovertopickyouup.Cool. Then 2 minutes of giggling, followed by another 20 seconds of silence.

Later on, this routine would have one last component added: Parent talking to parent. This was put into play when we would up at TheBoy's friend's house while TheBoy's friend wound up at our house, because you don't let nine year old boys make plans. They have roughly the same planning skills as rabid chipmunks on methamphetamines. Possibly less.

But now? TheBoy is capable of spending 20/30 minutes, even an hour on the phone. BabyGirl G., hardly one to be left out, has one friend (who has an older sister, go figure) that she talks to almost daily - this is where the etiquette part comes in. See, BabyGirl G. - or her friend - doesn't quite comprehend the concepts of "dinnertime" or "bedtime" or "you have to get off the phone now"... I'll sometimes catch BabyGirl G. sneaking off to call her friend after we've tucked her in - that didn't last long, as it results in immediate loss of phone privileges...

That's one of the great things about the kids getting older. Not only are they more self-sufficient*, but they start developing attachments to things we can take away as punishment. You want to see two kids scramble like mad? Tell them if they don't turn off the TV RIGHT NOW they won't get to watch it for the rest of the weekend... There are times - and they get more and more frequent - where I hear my father's voice come out of my mouth. I am, of course, duly horrified - not only because I swore I would never say those things, but because I finally realized that my father was right...

So, we've entered a new age, the age of communication. It's only a matter of time before TheBoy starts agitating for his own cell phone (I suspect he'll be getting one far too soon for my liking) - he's already started dropping hints. Heh, funny story: He was trying to make a pitch for a cell phone, and fell into the classic trap of assuming that life has always been this way. He asked me, "Oh yeah, dad, when did you get your first cell phone" and I got to delight in telling him that: a) I was 24; b) I paid for it myself; c) it came with 10 minutes of air time before you had to pay some outlandish rate; and d) it was roughly the same size as a Smart Car.

It's only a matter of time before I'm picking up the receiver and dialing at random, oblivious to the young adult already on the phone screaming "DAD! I'M ON THE PHONE"...

That is all.

*BabyGirl G. freaked me out the other morning. I went into her room to wake her up for school, and she was nowhere to be found. I checked the bathroom. I searched the office. I even looked in my bedroom in case she had snuck under the covers in my bed. Nothing. I was just starting to feel the panic rising as I walked downstairs, until I saw her, fully dressed, sitting at the kitchen table calmly eating her breakfast. Which she got herself. Of course, it was a four course buffet of Valentine's day chocolates...