Senior Citizens & Cell Phones

(google free images)

Disclaimer: no senior citizens, or citizens of any age who fit into this category of cell phone users were meant to be harmed by this post. I'm merely stating my frustration, er opinion, regarding how SOME seniors (and others, like Our Youngest Teen) use their cell phones.

The cell phone is a marvelous invention. We can call someone who is NOT at their home! I don't mean to call to have a long, meandering, private conversation that everyone in the waiting room has to listen to one side of. I'm talking about important things like suppose you've got the pukey flu, and your dear mother is at the grocery store fetching some items for you, only you forgot to say diet ginger ale, so you try her cell phone.

Except The Nutritionist's definition of cell phone is an item I keep in my car to make an emergency call to my husband should I need assistance. She doesn't carry it in her purse. She doesn't turn it on unless she wants to make a call. What's a pukey girl to do?

Call The Swede, who always has his cell phone, in fact, has bluetooth in his car so that he can safely answer EVEN IF HE'S DRIVING. This, by the way, is the highest level of cell phone usage. Always at the ready, and SAFE.

The Swede, who is just the best Dad in the whole world DRIVES TO THE GROCERY STORE to intercept the cell-less one, and adds the ginger ale to the cart. Talk about going out of your way to help a girl. I get my precious ginger ale, and feel a bit better.

My parents aren't the only ones who treat their cell phones this way. The pattern is almost the same with my in-laws, The Advocate and The Boss. My father-in-law is an attorney (no, I don't think he'll ever retire – he's just having too much fun as an expert consultant) and his cell is his business cell, so I'm more likely to find it on. However, The Boss, my dear mother-in-law who has been through the wringer health wise in the last two years (she wins...you've heard about me in snippets, but she wins...believe me) has been in and out of the hospital, the rehab hospital, and so he's been required to turn it off, so he's been harder to reach the last two agonizing years.

I don't think I've ever reached her on her cell. However, she's a step ahead of The Nutritionist – her phone is at least in her purse.

It's not just seniors who have phone use issues that don't match MY definition of what a cell phone is for, and this particular example is a 13 year old child. Mine. When he started riding his bike to school, I needed him to have a phone so he could call and say, “I crashed my bike, come help.” However, he forgets to bring it, forgets to charge it, forgets to look at it...

I've had to result to punishment (didn't work...) and now I'm actually BRIBING him to use it. I thought, “Teenager. New technology. Wow, he's going to love this present.” Not so much. This boy who plays MineCraft, wants to be an engineer (electrical), can take apart a hobby grade (read outrageously expensive) RC car, water proof the important parts, put it back together again, won't use his phone. What's a mom to do? Five days in a row of texting me before you leave school and I'll buy you a blizzard. I wonder if The Nutritionist can be bribed...

How do you use your cell phone? Have you run into these issues with the older generation? Do your children have phones? Do they use them? Or am I the only one going nuts trying to reach people who HAVE phones but don't USE their phones...