Rheta Grimsley Johnson
A call to simpler times
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Long, long ago, when telephones were tethered to a wall and always basic black, silent children roamed the earth staying, if possible, beneath parental radar.
In my day, chances were, if you were beckoned, it wasn't time to go to an ice-cream parlor or Six Flags Over Anything. There was a chore you had forgotten, a piano to practice or homework to be done.
The quicker you could slip outside, mount your bicycle and light out for the territory, the more freedom you'd score for yourself. Nobody wanted to dwell in the absolute, unfathomable darkness that was an adult — any adult's — shadow.
The last thing — the very last thing — any of us would have wanted was a way for our parents to page us or ring us up when we made good an escape. The thought would have horrified us.
So even more remarkable than watching grown-up drivers chatting away on a cellular phone while ostensibly handling a two-ton SUV going 80, even stranger than that, is the sight of mere tykes toting cell phones, chatting away on playgrounds and porches. I actually have seen one little girl put down her Barbie doll to make a call.
If you rule out drug deals, what could an 8-year-old possibly have to say to another 8-year-old?
As a child, I certainly could use our home phone — if Mother wasn't on it, and if the hour was decent, that is to say between 8 a.m. and 6 p.m. — but there were only two conversations to be had.
"Can you play?"
"Yes." And,
"Can you play?"
"No."
We were a succinct and efficient generation, at least conversationally. The telephone had been around long enough to be taken for granted, and it just wasn't technology that made your heart race or your mouth run. It was there for making play dates, for emergencies and for adults. There was nothing particularly fun or cool about it, at least not until the teenage years and the invention of the pink Princess Phone.
Like everything else, phone psychology has changed. Fueled by adult example, young children nowadays find it absolutely necessary to chat about nothing nonstop. After all, they've seen their parents do it.
If you've witnessed your own mom on the cereal aisle of the Super Center calling a girlfriend to find out what she's wearing to a party two weeks from Friday, then you're more likely to think that inane, one-way conversations in public are not only a necessity, but normal.
They are not.
We are raising a generation now that won't be able to walk from the front door to the car door without checking in with someone else. That's not connected, that's insane.
The other day, a 9-year-old with a new picture-taking cell phone pushed it under my nose and said, "Say something."
"Who is it?" I asked, thinking maybe I needed to confer with the little girl's mother about matters of consequence.
"It's a friend of mine," she said. "Just say, 'Whadz happ'ning?'"
Now, I care a lot about this little girl, as cute and sweet a child as ever I've known. I gladly would throw myself between her and a runaway train, or spend the milk money on a toy that won't last 10 minutes. I take orders from her at least 20 times daily when she's around.
"I can't," I said. "I can't say 'Whadz happ'ning?' on a telephone to someone I don't know for no good reason."
"Well," she said with a genuinely puzzled expression. "If you don't want to."
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