A long time ago, 1992, I had just come home from my high school graduation ceremony. It was a nice night, and after the family settled into the living room, a group of friends and I sat out on the deck to BS for a while. Years have erased some details, but I’d guess there were 8-9 of us, with a pretty even boy-girl ratio.
What we didn’t realize is that all the windows were open. It was a relatively small house, and our voices traveled well. My parents were mortified. My grandmother may actually have been physically ill.
I bring this up because both my kids have at least one thing in common. When they get home from school, their day is described as “good.” Efforts to gather more information are usually met with requests for food. Kayla, the teenager, will occasionally open up when bribed with buffalo wings and a lunch date away from her sister, but I’d like that uncensored peek into her life that my parents received 23 years ago.
So I attempt to eavesdrop. My wife and I respect Kayla’s privacy enough to not secretly read her text and Facebook messages, but if a friend is over and I happen to be outside an open window or in the basement next to an open vent, anything overheard would be through no fault of my own.
This turns out to be a very ineffective way to gather information about a teenager’s life. It’s been lamented for years, but the truth is that kids really do no longer talk to each other in person. They communicate by punching buttons, even when sitting in close proximity to each other. Occasionally one will ask “did you see this”, or “look at this”. This is often followed by laughter or what I assume to be insults that I’m not familiar with, directed at persons unknown. Talking is done in a hyper-fast, abbreviated language that I have a hard time following. Nothing is learned.
I have no more success at pick up time for preschool. Listening to three-year-olds talk is like watching the old men on one of those Sunday morning political roundtables on obscure cable channels. There are as many different conversations as there are participants, everyone seems to think they are saying something really important, and they all leave friends, completely oblivious to the fact that they were talking to themselves the whole time.
I’m going to need a new plan.
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Originally published on Musings of a Thirsty Daddy
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