Thursday, July 22, 2010

Miss Yakity Yak


The minute she walked in the house from camp today, Daughter picked up the phone to call her best friend. The best friend wasn't at camp today and Daughter needed to know if she was okay. Also, because Daughter's almost eleven she suddenly wants to be this thing - this Girl Who Talks On The Phone (is she copying me?) and so she's trying her best to monopolize it.

So she calls unsuccessfully but later the best friend calls back. Over the course of the next half hour this is what I see: I see her laying on my bed, talking to the phone laying next to her on speaker; I see her laying upside down on her bed the same way; I see her sitting on the computer reading her best friend her emails; I see her wheeling around the house on the office chair, talking; and, finally, I see Daughter marching around the house, following me, her finger on the mute button, asking me for some ideas of what they should talk about. Apparently there now was dead silence on the phone call.

I say, "If you're done talking, why don't you just get off?" But, of course, that just proves how old I've gotten and the fact that I forgot how important it is to monopolize the telephone.

She gives me a look like I'm nuts and keeps holding the mute button down. "Mom! I want to keep talking! We just don't have anything to talk about!"

Okay. That makes sense.

In my house growing up there were seven daughters and our one mother all vying for not only one phone line, but for one actual telephone. It sat on the wall of our kitchen with a cord that had probably been about six feet originally but had been pulled and tugged by us all over the house until it was actually flattened and stretched to about thirty feet.

There was just this one phone, then, for all the boys in the world to call and ask out all my sisters on dates and then, afterwards, for all my sisters' girlfriends to call to discuss those same boys. Being one of the younger sisters, I had low priority with the phone. If I wanted to sit on the phone with no purpose at all, like Daughter was doing, the phone would have been hung up for me and confiscated.

But I'm helpful if nothing else. I glance quickly at the newspaper. "How about Justin Bieber?"

"Mom," she shakes her head, "We're so over him."

The phone calls ends unexpectedly. The line goes dead suddenly. When Daughter calls her friend to see what happened the friend says during one of the silences she just fell asleep. On top of the phone.

And with that I finally hear the words, "Okay, bye."

Have your kids become obsessed with talking on the phone or did they ever do this? Do they sit in dead silence for hours just to stay on?  Do you remember any "phone battles" from your childhood?
Do you think that kids get their phone behavior from their parents?

34 comments:

  1. Miss D. has a friend who calls incessantly. If we don't answer her call, she calls back immediately, overandoverandover until we do answer. I hate this kid.

    My sister used to hog the phone for hours, and yes, sometimes she would just breathe into it. I never understood.

    I am not a phone talker. Never was. Maybe because my sister always had the darn thing in her hand?

    ReplyDelete
  2. How times have changed! Mine (older than yours) both have cell phones. Rarely do they talk - they TEXT. My 17-year old does it a lot. And they chat online. Talk on the phone - nope. The house phone - never!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Oh my word that brings back memories... :) I talked on the phone for hours, driving my parents insane!!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Oh how I miss those days when I could hear at least half of the conversations my daughter was having. These days, it's all click, click, click on keyboards as she texts and "chats" with dozens of people on her phone and Facebook - all at the same time.

    ReplyDelete
  5. This is great! I was going to say the same thing Karen said...around here, talking is so last century! It's all texting. Unbelieveable. The other day I was at Target and 2 6-7 year olds, each with their respective moms, obviously ran into each other unexpectedly. They were animated, squealing and hugging until one of the mom's was nudging her daughter to get a move on, so the younger-than-even-a-tween said, "I'll text you when I got home!"

    Very funny stuff, Linda. I can visualize the wall phone with the cord all flattened out from being drug to various private places in the busy house!

    ReplyDelete
  6. My 16 year old was on his cell with his girlfriend. I am pretty certain, although he enjoys talking with her, he wanted to get back to his video game before one of the other boys took it over. He kept telling her she had to go eat. LOL!

    ReplyDelete
  7. I was never a phone talker, but my just-turned 11-year-old loves it! Same situation as in your house! Even after a visit she will get a call or call just to get the phone version of the visit! A new development that I don't like one bit!

    ReplyDelete
  8. This cracks me up! (And brings back teenage days long before email, texting, and FB - when the fighting over the phone was a daily event.)

    The funny thing is - boys enjoy the phone, too! One of mine was a big talker and on the phone a lot as a tween (and still, as a teen). The other, less so. Instead - he's big into IM, text, and FB. I'm just grateful when they look up and talk to me, and when they're away, grateful for any communication however it comes!

    ReplyDelete
  9. I remember the days of yapping on the one phone line with my best girlfriend for HOURS ON END and getting in so much trouble when my mom got home from work. Naturally, she'd been trying to call since school let out. Usually, it was something like, "I needed you to take the chicken out of the freezer and now we have no dinner!" Of course, we had dinner. It just wasn't chicken. It was pancakes. Or eggs. Served up with some anger. Ah... the good old days.

    Just wanted to take a minute to let you know that you were tagged yesterday on HERE'S TO YOU THURSDAY. Since you didn't comment with a love it or hate it statement, I am assuming that means you didn't see it. Hope you like it!

    ReplyDelete
  10. Just the opposite, actually. My son was complaining that the girl he was crushing on was ground so she had no IM, no Facebook, no texting. When I asked why he didn't just talk to her on the phone his eyes rolled back in his head so far that he fell over. Maybe it's a boy thing.

    ReplyDelete
  11. Our kids are texters, too. It's been ages since they saw me on the phone so there you go.

    Your descriptions of the family phone of the past made me howl. So many memories. We had 2 extensions. The one in the kitchen with the stretched out cord and the one in my parent's bedroom. Oh the way we used to annoy each other by picking up the other extension!

    And I remember dialing the time and temperature number and pretending to talk to my mom at work to get my brother to stop doing whatever it was he was doing to bother me.

    Thanks for the reminder of the fun times!

    ReplyDelete
  12. I can't stop laughing! This is hilarious! I remember myself at about 12 lying on my parents' bed talking to my best friend. We too ran out of stuff to say, afterall we had just spent all day together at school, it doesn't take long to cover the ten minute ride home. So, we invented a game, we would grab random things and make noise with it and the other would have to guess what it was. That is, until my mother realized I was playing on the phone and I got in really big trouble and had to get off. That was our only phone line too, and about a year later, for my birthday, I got my own phone line. I thought I was lucky, but I think my parents just wanted the phone back.

    ReplyDelete
  13. Is it wrong for me to long for the old days of land lines and kids talking on the phone? By the time my girls were talking on the phone, they had cell phones, My Space and FaceBook. Your posting has made me wax nostalgic for my youth, my middle school days of talking or not to my "boyfriend" and yapping forever with girlfriends. I also remember the days before caller ID when I would call my high school boyfriend and then hang up when he answered. Thanks for the memories.

    ReplyDelete
  14. I remember extremely long talks with my best friend when we were around eleven, and our code "did you get any mail today" to mean a grown-up had just walked in the room and so this explained why you couldn't say anything private. Of course we were so young I can't remember anything that could have actually been worth concealing.

    It sounds to me like they have a great true friendship. All my boys' collective phone talk for the last thirteen and sixteen years combined adds up to less than your daughter's one recent call.

    ReplyDelete
  15. Haha! I've never been much of a phone person. If I am done talking, I am done talking. You know? The last time I talked longer than 10 minutes on the phone was when my mother called and we had something important to discuss. Otherwise, I keep phone conversations limited to 3 minutes.

    ReplyDelete
  16. My daughter calls her best friend and they stop talking when the battery runs out. It will go for about one hour to one and a half hours before dieing. It's handy.
    It also runs out when I am talking (or should I say I am getting talked to) by my mil..
    Then I have to say "OH, the battery is getting low".
    I know I should replace this battery...but I love my phone battery. lolol.

    ReplyDelete
  17. oh, I didn't mention that we didn't have a phone at that age...lol. How sad is that? Not very.
    Yes, no phone. My mom couldn't afford it.

    ReplyDelete
  18. I'm an only child. The phone was mine, all mine. =>

    I still remember my first phone conversation with a boy ... sweet little fifth-grade Timothy. Sigh.

    ReplyDelete
  19. TKW, breathing into the phone! :) and, oh my, I forgot the stalking ability of little girls, calling over and over and over! I must have inherited my phone chattiness from my mother!

    ReplyDelete
  20. Karen, for awhile there my daughter and her friend were only texting but then suddenly they seemed to discover the appeal of the ringing phone. I'm glad to see that a ringing phone still can mean something!

    ReplyDelete
  21. Corinne, it is funny to think back to those days of vying for the phone line, especially now that most of us have multiple phones!

    Lisa, you're right, the "eavesdropability" so to speak, of at least half a conversation can give us a barometer into our kids' lives. Without it, texting clicks don't cut it!

    ReplyDelete
  22. Leslie, I know, technology's insane. One time there were two teens in my foyer texting each other while they were standing there instead of talking!

    Nicki, some guys just aren't the chatty type, right? To this day, my husband's a real dud in this department but once in a while he'll text me a love note. Yea technology!

    ReplyDelete
  23. Purple Cow, you reminded me of my days in junior high when my friends and i would endlessly rehash conversations and events for hours on the phone. Thank goodness that ended decades ago!

    BLW, boys. I swear. I just watched my son mass-text his entire eight grade class from his old school. I can't imagine even knowing how to do that! And, just for once, I'd love to see him on an actual phone call.

    ReplyDelete
  24. Robin, love that your mom was trying to call you and couldn't get through! my mom, I swear, never left our house and was hooked up to our phone like a respirator, so no problem like that around our place!

    Feefifoto, so funny that an actual phone call is beyond the pale now! Although I think of how anxiety ridden my teen years were waiting for guys to call and I guess I'm a little jealous. How much easier would it have been to only have to text?

    ReplyDelete
  25. From the comments I have read I think we should consider ourselves lucky when our kids hog the phone like the "good old days" rather than text, e-mail or FB! Now that I think of it some good old fashioned letter-writing would be good too...but I guess I'm asking for too much.

    ReplyDelete
  26. Scottsdale? COOL!! I'm hoping to head out that way when summer semester is over... I need a break before the Fall semester starts... and I'm thinking a healthy dose of AZ and NM would work just right!!!

    Found you through Robin...

    Some day, those phonin' textin' little ones are going to be gone... :o( and out on their own...

    ~shoes~

    ReplyDelete
  27. Lisa, I totally forgot about the annoyance of siblings picking up the extensions to pressure the person on the phone to get off! I swear I could tell from the breathing which of my sisters it was each time!

    Jennifer, that's so funny! My friend who lived across the street from me would call me because we just HAD to get phone calls, even though we could have yelled out our windows at each other!

    ReplyDelete
  28. Michelle, how do kids even live without phony phone calls? So much of my young love life was built on making them and getting them! Now Sven if someone hung up and didn't register on caller ID of course you'd assume it was a solicitor! No fun at all!

    Bruce, your "code" with your friend reminded me of how grown up I felt when I first used the phone with my best friend in Skokie. I never had to hide anything from my mom, mainly because she wasn't really paying attention, but her mom listened to every word! Having a code rings a bell!

    ReplyDelete
  29. Amber, you will be a good role model to your kids by not sitting on the phone too long (the computer's another thing, right?) I can't say I'm the same way. I don't take cell phone falls when I'm with them but when I get home I normally have a few calls to make, friendships to keep up that depend on actual conversations! They hate this. The sound of me starting a phone call is like a clarion call to them to come sit on my head where ever I'm at and interrupt me!

    ReplyDelete
  30. Chris, no phone! You get the award for phone deprivation! Love the strategic use of the phone battery to end phone calls! Smart...

    Stacia, no sharing of the phone? No multiple interruptions of that first phone call from a boy by all your siblings! Wow!

    ReplyDelete
  31. Purple cow, my son got a couple lessons in letter writing. He had to write a gazillion thank you no yes for his Bar Mitzvah and, when he was at camp last summer he wrote endless pleas to my husband and me to come get him! Good writing experience!

    Red shoes, thanks for visiting. In some seasons Scottsdale is ideal. Not now, of course...

    ReplyDelete
  32. This is too funny! I laughed that she had to come ask you for ideas of what to talk about. And her love of the phone will only grow. Oh my. You have some long teenage years ahead of you.

    ReplyDelete
  33. With my 14 year old, it is texting and / or putting her cell on speaker. She and her friends will sit and watch favorite shows like that - just texting and conference calling - acting like they're in the same room (and, keep in mind, they probably JUST saw eachother). She is off to camp in a few days.... and - yep - no phones there - have to turn all cell phones in, so... withdrawal? :-)

    ReplyDelete
  34. Eva, I just wish she'd ask me for the topics BEFORE she gets on the phone! Then I could write a list for her! But it's kind of panicky, having having her run after me in the house and knowing there's already a lull in the conversation!

    ReplyDelete