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Texting...
It's a new skill needed for Moms
Ok, for those who might not know, I had a son go off to college this year, and this is my first time learning to communicate from a distance with the person I was intimate enough to give birth to.
But he's 18 now and the cords are severed even more than they were when he got the keys to the car at 16.
Now is the time where I'm learning how to be intimate yet distant as all parents do. I'm also learning the language of communication via texting vs. phone and/or in person.
When I separated from my parents (they moved away from me to Florida - I never got to leave them) we learned to communicate on extension phones. I learned that every conversation started the same. Dad would pick up, say hello, then yell "Madeleine, pick up the phone." Once both of them were on separate phones we'd shift to the next predictable part of the phone conversation - which was about how being on the extension phone made one of their voices so loud it was uncomfortable to the other one in the house and the other phone went to where they almost couldn't hear at all. Then it would go to "I don't know why we can’t change the volume, so I'll get off and talk to her when you're done." All of our conversations started that way for years.
I understood that way of communicating.
With my son now, we don't pick up the phone and call. We hit our phones and text each other with a volley of one-liners. But there are questions I've had to ask myself about the appropriateness of the texts. Since they're pretty simple to do, how much is too much? If I text 20 times per day, is that normal or would I maybe be mistaken for a smothering type of mom?
Then there's the pressure of being clever vs. boring. A lot of our exchanges are actually funny, but are we really communicating if it's:
Me: Hi boy.
Him: Hi Mom.
Me: Thinking about u and hope u're having a good day.
Him: LOL. u 2
One thing I've noticed is the more experienced texter (him) sprinkles a lot of LOL's or haha's in the mix. I gather that for texters it's really more like they're smiling rather than really laughing out loud.
Yesterday I was at lunch when he texted me (I love when he initiates the text) but I didn’t sit at a table with people and respond back like he would have done. He and most texters his age sit at restaurants with knives, forks, spoons and cell phones and use them interchangeably. I'm of the generation that thinks the first three are the only appropriate, needed utensils for lunch.
Yesterday was busy for me till pretty late at night when I was going to text him back with a fuller conversation. Before I got to it, he commented about my tardiness in responding to a simple text. So I'm learning the rules of texting. Maybe I should have picked up that fourth utensil and simply texted - "haha I'll text u 2night." In the world of communication via cyberspace vs. the guys in the chairs around me, maybe I need to learn the art of balance.
The best thing about texting for me is that if I'm really missing him, I look through the history of texts on my iPhone and smile at our history. That's something my parents couldn't do once the phone was hung up. And when I read through a lot of them, many of them really do make me
LOL!!!!!!!!
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