Who's at Fault

Two days apart and two teenagers are dead in separate car accidents where texting is allegedly a factor in the accidents.  Same stretch of highway, the first accident was well publicized and yet the second accident happened.  RCMP suspect both were texting while driving.

       Here’s my question.  How is it possible that parents continue to buy cell phones for their children at extremely young ages when the parents must have heard all the controversy regarding the misuse of cell phones.   I don’t think I need to go into details regarding the misuse, be it while driving or in the classroom; whether it be texting for obsessive and inconsequential things or more seriously for harassing classmates.  I cannot comprehend why it is essential for these children to have cell phones.  Think of the millions of children who went to school and was separated from their parents for all of 6 hours, quite happy to be out of contact with said parents.  What is the matter with parents that they feel they know what their children are doing because they have a cell phone.  Do you really believe that when they text you that they are at Sally’s they aren’t really at the mall or in Johnny’s bedroom?  Is it really impossible for them to telephone from the school office to tell you they are sick?  Will you get to them any faster?

       Now here’s my take.  Parents want their kids to have what the other kids have.  They want their kids to be cool.  They don’t want to listen to their nagging query “can I have, can I have . . .” so they shut them up by buying the toy.  A lethal toy.  Once again I bring up my own parents’ mantra.  “No.”  End of story.   “No.”  Once, firm, that was it.  I am pretty sure that my parents were neither gods, genies, wizards nor demons from hell.  But they had the power.  One tiny, two-letter word and it was over.  No nagging, no possibility of a do-over, re-think or harassment process.  No meant no.

       For the millionth time, I do not understand why the next generation of parents, going forward, have had such a hard time uttering this word.  I don’t know how many times I have felt irritated in a store listening to some ineffectual mother try to stop her kid from misbehaving by saying something futile like “when we get home” or “when your father hears about this”.   Who do you think you are kidding?  Certainly not the child and anyone listening knows that by the time you are half way out of the store the whole incident is forgotten.  When I was 17 I took my baby sister to Woolco warning her as we went “No bubble gum, and if you nag me I am taking you home.”  Sure enough, the little brat begged at the bubble gum machine and took a hysterical fit when I said no.  My other sister and I took her by her arms and dragged her the 4 blocks home sobbing all the way, opened up the front door, threw her into the hall and yelled to Mom “Charlotte’s home.” And then returned to the store.  From that day forward my sister was good as gold, I could take her anywhere and she was a perfect angel.  She knew I meant what I said regardless of what the inconvenient consequence was to me.  I was only 17 years old but I knew how to get control of a kid.

       It wasn’t magic.  It was knowing how to say no.