Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Making Up Stories

For the last few days, I’ve been really angry at my son. When texting came into vogue—a time I remember quite well because he had a girlfriend who discovered it and realized she could contact him anywhere, even in middle school class, and proceeded to do so, oh, not more than every forty seconds, sixteen hours a day, a fact I discovered when I got the cell-phone bill—my son realized if he played things right he may never have to listen to my voice ever again.


That’s working for him.

I’ve learned my calls to him will only make it as far as Voice Mail or, as he terms it, I-must-have-pressed-the-wrong-button-and-deleted-it. Our conversations are text bites. Me: WILL U B HOME 2NITE? And him: SEND $$ 2DAY. Me: ?LOW BATT? Which is my equivalent of sticking my fingers in my ears and saying, “La la la la la.”

Sometimes I can’t rouse him to even answer a text, though, and that makes me so friggin’ mad because it’s impossible to reduce “How can you be so disrespectful after all I’ve done for you, ESPECIALLY knowing I’m wondering if you’re laying dead in a ditch somewhere. This is serious. I mean, really serious. Please at least give me the courtesy of a yes or no. I need to know RIGHT THIS MINUTE if I should set the table for three people or two” to only a handful of words.

So the last few days, I couldn’t rouse him. Which made me really angry.

He finally landed at home long enough for me to actually confront him face-to-face, an occasion when I realized that he’s a foot taller than me and has whiskers.

After checking ID, I berated him for not answering my texts—not the ones I’d sent earlier that day, nor the ones from the day before, and, come to think of it, not the ones from last week, either. He asked if I’d programmed in the new cell phone number he’d sent me and deleted his old one.

Oh.

No.

Kind of reminded me of a time not long ago when I thought a friend’s lack of response to a note I’d sent her meant she had decided she no longer wanted to be my friend, probably because I’d forgotten her birthday, but that was to be understood, wasn’t it, because it wasn’t like she’d remembered mine six months before that, and before that, I’d invited her to Christmas dinner, and she hadn’t even responded till a few days before, which was probably because she’d never forgiven me for calling her Chubs when we were in high school. Then I found out her mother had died, and she was at the funeral.

Hmph. She hadn’t mentioned that on Facebook.

Maybe I should keep the storytelling to my books and out of real life. And remember real life doesn’t show up on my smart phone.