Cell Hell

Today was a very sad day for me.

My little girl is no longer little.

She now has her first cell phone.

Ok, she is 13.  And she is taller than her mom.

But her own personal cell phone?

WHY?

What did I do to deserve this!

Do you know how much texting she is going to do?

Do you know how many friends she is going to talk to?

What's next, Boys?

You can tell by the grays on my head that I am no longer young, but now...

I am officially old!

My daughter has her own phone number.

Just because EVERY other child, ten and over, has their cell phone doesn't mean we have to do it.

Right?

If every other child were to jump off the high dive, would you?

Does this mean she doesn't have to eat her vegetables any more, "because we said so"?

Or put away that pile of dirty clothes in her room...

Or pickup the dog poop...

This decision was a long time in coming, but somehow we held her off.

Until today.

Today we went to get my daughter her first phone AND trade in my wife’s dinosaur of a flip phone.

By the time we got there, my daughter had already done the research and reached her decision.

In fact, it took her about 3.6 seconds from the moment we arrived to find the one she wanted.

The phone was listed at $79.99, but if you sign up for a two-year contract, the price dropped to $29.99, with a mail-in rebate.

Or that’s what they wanted you think.

While doing more research than I did for any of my research papers, my crafty 13-year old found that if we ordered the phone through the service provider’s website, the phones were free.

The salesperson balked at first, but when she saw the puppy dog eyes, I think she caved.

Not my daughter’s puppy dog eyes, but my wife’s.

Considering she’s had the same phone since Bush was President, the first Bush, there was no way she was going to spend $29.99 on a new one.

Kinda like the other day when my friend’s 80+ year old dad nearly passed out when his son paid $2.05 for a large cup of coffee.

Imagine if he would’ve bought the $4 latte.

Within seconds the cell phone salesperson spoke to her manager and yada yada yada...

Free phones for everyone!

My wife, my daughter AND my 11-year old son.

Yep, we melted like butter.

How could we not.  It was free.

Well, free for now.

We added the kids (and their phones) to the family plan with combined minutes and UNLIMITED TEXTING.

Good move on the unlimited texting.

And the extra line for my son is only $9.99 a month.

You can barely get three Macchiatos for that.

When my son found out that he was getting a phone, too, you would’ve thought it was Christmas.

In fact, the kids were so excited that my wife told me she was glad that Santa didn’t get the kids the phone because she wanted us to get full credit.

We went out to eat after the phone store to set some serious guidelines.

IF you don’t keep your room clean...

and IF you don’t put your dishes away...

and IF you don’t, I don’t remember the third one....

...something bad is going to happen to your phone.

Yeah, something bad. 

But at that point, we could’ve asked the kids to snake the toilets and they would’ve said yes.

This was clearly one of the greatest days of their life.

I could tell by the “dad, I got a phone” big hug.

Even the six-year old was happy.

She got my wife’s old flip phone.

(Shhh... Don’t tell her the line has been disconnected.)

If you enjoyed this story about my daughter’s cell phone, you will love the prequel from February:

Daddy’s Little Texter

Daddy's Little Texter

My 12-year old girl is getting to the age where things can be very confusing... for me.

Many times she acts like she is 18. Sometimes, she is eight.

But the bottom line is I am watching my little baby disappear in front of my eyes.

If you think this blog is headed down Sadness Avenue, it is not.

I am really enjoying watching her grow up.

We listen to a lot of the same music -- except for Bob Dylan. For some reason, she thinks he sounds whiny. What does she know?

We enjoy a lot of the same movies and TV shows.

Most of all, we enjoy each other.

I hope that continues.

One thing that we don’t have in common, is a cell phone.

I know it’s only a short time away, but somehow we have successfully held off getting her a cell phone for the time being.

Being unemployed, it’s easy to justify not wanting the extra monthly costs, but I think the truth is, we, her parents, are not ready for that next step of independence.

I certainly understand the upside of her having a phone if she ever needs to contact us, but thankfully, our little girl’s schedule is pretty simple at the moment.

School, dance, home, sleep. Rinse and Repeat.

We got her (and her siblings) an iPod Touch last year to keep them on the fast track to technology and also provide them with another distraction from doing their homework.

The second part was unintentional.

It took them about three seconds to realize that they couldn’t text using the iPod touch.

It took them about five seconds to find an application to do so.

So far, we have denied each of their 37 requests to download the app, but I’m sure its only a matter of time.

But as part of the tech age, we have opened up an email address for each of the kids, including the six-year old.

I monitor their email accounts, so just in case I see an important email before they do, I can notify them.

Who I am kidding, I want to know about their business.

Thankfully, they are GREAT kids and I hope to keep it that way.

Most of the emails they get are from people that I either know or have heard of, so it caught my eye when my 12-year got a pair of emails yesterday afternoon with no subject from a person I didn’t recognize.

I opened the emails and found one with a picture of a Nazi Swastika and another with information on the SS Hitler Youth.

As you might imagine, that sent my wandering mind into a tailspin.

I realized quickly that jumping to any conclusion would be counterproductive, but as a father and a Jew, not necessarily in that order, it shook me.

I’m sure my little angel had an answer to what this was all about, but I couldn’t wait to find out.

I calmly picked her up after school, inquired how her day went, checked in with her brother and sister and then asked if she knew a Kyle J.

She knows that I monitor her email and as far as I can tell, she is fine with that.

I’m sure that clock is ticking too.

Well, I was happy to hear that Kyle J is a classmate and they are working on World War II in her history class.

Whew.

Wait a minute, my innocent 12-year old girl is getting emails from a boy?

Well, it’s pretty clear my little girl is not so little anymore.

With a little help from a school film and a conversation with mom, she is way more up to speed on the birds and the bees than I ever was.

With a little help from her history teacher and some emails from a classmate, she is learning about Hitler.

I guess it’s time for me to teach her about texting.