phones

I finally gave in and gave my two oldest daughters cell phones for Christmas. They have been hounding me for almost 2 years and I kept telling them they had to wait until they were teenagers. After they would tell me "only a year", I would politely remind them that they were still teenagers at age 19. That sure earned me the "mooooom" with an eye roll.

I got my first phone when I was just out of high school. Maybe I was still a senior. And it was a bag phone. The phone stayed in my truck and couldn't come out or it didn't work. It was huge I might add. Plus, I had to wait until I could pay for my phone myself. (I paid for my truck and insurance too!)

But times have changed and cell phones have become almost a necessity. I say that carefully because we obviously don't need cell phones to live, but the convenience of them and the security of having a way to communicate with the world with you at all times is what has become a necessity.

Therefore, my two 12 year olds got phones. It was quite the ordeal getting them. With Alltel switching to AT&T in the new year, it made the process much more complicated. To make a very long story shorter, there were no phones with rebates, so I would have paid full price for the phones, plus the girls would have been stuck in a 2 year contract. I ended up bringing in 2 old phones and having those lines activated. By doing this, the girls are out of contract and will still be able to pick out new phones next week. Come February we will all receive our new AT&T phones.

Now the kicker to this whole story is what one of my daughter's friends said to her. When I dropped her off at basketball practice the other girl wanted to see her phone. Right away she looked at it and said, "that's a piece of crap". My daughter didn't tell me this until she got home.

I know kids can be cruel and can say stupid things. I'm thinking kids should be thankful to have a phone that texts and can be used for calls and if it works, then who cares? But I guess that 12 year old has a better phone than my daughter. All the power to her. I just tell my girls that they'll be picking out brand new phones this week and will get them in February.