Modern marvels of communication
The world of communication has changed drastically the past couple of decades. I'm not talking about newspapers, radio, and TV. I'm talking about one-on-one communication through phone calls or the computer.
With the availability of call-waiting and caller-ID it's easy to take the phone calls you want and screen the ones you don't. I confess, I screen my phone calls at home. We have call-waiting and caller-ID but the most effective method of screening is a 15-year-old daughter.
I'd say 90 percent of the incoming calls are for Daughter #2. This puzzles me. She's at school all day. When she comes home and I ask, "What's new?" The answer is usually "Nothing." Then the phone rings and that's the last I see of her. She disappears into her bedroom or "command center."
Some of these phone calls last for hours. OK, I may be exaggerating here. I've never actually timed the calls. But what do they find to talk about? At times it looks like she's just holding the phone. I assume someone on the other end is doing the talking. However, I have seen her put down the phone, go do something else, and return in time to say, "uh-huh" or something equally as important.
When she's not on the phone, she's on the computer. The invention of e-mail and MSN, which is an instant messenger service, has certainly changed the way teen-agers communicate.
Some of those phone calls consist of "Hey, you on tonight?" It took me a while to decipher that into, "Will you be using your computer to communicate this evening?"
Communicating via computer is different than a phone call. It allows Daughter #2 to visit with several different people at the same time. While she's doing this she can surf the Internet, read a magazine, watch TV, leave for dinner, or whatever. Oh, and do homework.
All this is great — if you're a teen-ager. Once, in attempt to figure out how the computer communications process works and in hope I could get a tiny piece of her time each day, I asked her to set up an MSN account for me. Her idea of teaching me how it worked consisted of a few lightning-quick clicks of the mouse and saying, "OK, you're all set."
Obviously, she figured her considerably outdated mother wouldn't catch on and she disappeared back into her command center. I like to think she was surprised when my user name popped up on her screen and I started a conversation.
I secretly congratulated myself on outfoxing her. For a few weeks we communicated nightly. I knew what was going on at school and she told me about homework assignments. I spelled out chore lists and got schedules for upcoming events. It was great.
I came to my senses one evening after I trudged up the stairs to her bedroom and asked her to get on the computer so I could talk to her. With that, my MSN days ended and we went back to the old-fashioned way of communicating:
"What's new?" I ask.
"Nothing," she mumbles as the phone rings and I hear the slamming of the command center door.
— DONNA BERNHARDT
