My view this morning! Please ignore my messy table – but don’t ignore the beauty of my flowers!  My DH grows zinnias every summer just for the picking.  He used to have a huge bed of them, but recent years has shown them to not be very productive.  He scaled them back to a small raised bed and we have been enjoying them each week for several weeks now.  I love the variety and vibrancy of color!!  He used to have a box full of those old bud vases that he would fill each Sunday evening from our garden and take them to each of the  women in his office group every Monday morning.  Then on Friday, he would collect the vases and bring them home to repeat the process for next week. Lets all say a collective “awwwweeee”!  Sorry folks – he’s mine.  You will have to wait and get in line after I die.

 

 

Speaking of flowers – I am reminded of cell phones.

 

Well not really – I just needed to transition and couldn’t think of anything clever… it is Friday you know!

 

Cell phones.  

 

Sheesh.  I remember buying our first one.  No idea of the year, just that we only got two.  One for dad and one for mom.  No amount of cajoling could get us to get anyone else one.  To be fair, I think our oldest was only in middle school….so this was maybe the very late ‘90’s.  We hardly used them – compared to what we do with our phones today.  But we were taken with the “convenience” of them and the safety that one day they would provide for our children.  Needless to say, over the next several years, 4 additional lines were added to our bill.  Sigh….

 

Organization… it is a must when there are 4 kids, a husband with two (really 3) jobs and a working mom.  And organization is my middle name!  Well, really “Dorrell” is my middle name – but that is a genealogy story.

 

What phone better organizes than… a Blackberry! And my oldest, working in NYC, had one, loved it, so that is what mom gets.  Never got the hang of all that it could do.  Reminded me of our PDA (is that what they were called?)  

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fast forward…..

 

Child No 3 really wants to travel to Germany with her German class during her Junior year of HS.  She brings the paperwork home – we tell her, while we would love for her to go, there is no way we can afford it.  We have had to say no to the older two for similar requests.  She says – I will earn my way – it is a payment plan.  We do the calculations with her and it just does not look possible. This child….. if she wants something, nothing gets in her way. (And she may look like her mother, but she is definately not pushy like her mother!)  She says she can do it!  We say – go for it!!

She already had a job – she asked for as many hours as she could get.  Many days were not pleasant for her in this job – the boss was kind of bi-polar.  But she stuck it out.  Then she took on babysitting – and this was pay dirt for her!  We have always called her the “Pied Piper” where children are concerned …. no matter where we went, kids would find her! Wonder why?

 

 

 

 

Short story …

 

She paid for every penny of that trip, on time for payments, AND had plenty left over for spending money.

What she didn’t have was an international compatible cell phone.  But I did.  Remember the Blackberry. And we wanted her to have access to a phone since she is a diabetic.  Just in case something went wrong.  So mom and daughter traded phones for 10 days.

 

 

 

While my phone was enjoying the sites of Germany, her phone was at my desk in the school district offices.  Working away one day – I receive a text – one that was …. well, a bit risque for this old mom.  And it is not from anyone I know. However, it seems to be from someone that knows my  DD. And he seems to be a he… mentioning some things that any mom might be concerned about her daughter hearing.

 

So what do I do?

 

 I play dumb.  

 

I pretend.  

 

Wanna take parenting lessons from me?

 

I engage this young man – ever so vaguely.  And to my delight- he falls directly into my trap. After a few exchanges of borderline “questionable”  conversation – I reveal to this fella that I am not who he thinks I am.  That in fact, I am the mother of who he thinks I am.  

 

Are you imagining his panic?  

 

The texting suddenly went silent.  

 

Being the creeper that I am…. and every good parent should be proud of any investigative skills they can hone – I discover that this young man is in my daughter’s graduating class, lives just down the street from us and is the son of a teacher in our district.  Hmmmmm.  

 

So now I engage on a different level.  

 

I say to this young man something like this: “Of course I am concerned that you would text my daughter with these sexual innuendos … but I want you to know that I am also concerned about you.  That you feel that it is appropriate to approach someone that you seem to “like” with this kind of conversation.  I think that this says that you are struggling with something, and if you would like to talk about it – here is my email.  I would be happy to talk to you anytime.”

 

Come on…. I did study those 2 years at the Cleveland Psychiatric hospital that resulted in a Master’s Degree.  Should use it at some level.

 

What resulted was an ongoing conversation for several days about how this young man had had a crush on my daughter for several years.  He shared that he felt she was out of his league (not true, but he was creating his own destiny with his lousy conversation) and was desperate to catch her attention (negative reinforcement is better than no reinforcement). I did my best to offer him a listening ear, encouraged the positive things he saw in his own life and attempted to show him what his negative behavior was bringing to him…. besides embarrassment.  

 

Of course, my DD was mortified when she got home and found all this out.  But she lived and so did this young man.  According to her, he  joined the Navy, got married and has 2 children.

 

I bet he always checks his texts to be sure they go to the right person.
Then there was this other boy…

 

In 5th grade or so, he asked this same daughter on AOL messenger one day, while I am reading over her shoulder, “what color underwear are you wearing?” They are both 23 now and we see he and his family every year at the church where we go for Christmas Eve service. I always want to ask him what color underwear he has on…. but my daughter says I can’t!