Helicopter Moms: Uk tt msg? Eye do. (Understand that message? I do.)

 

SKOKIE, Ill., Jan. 26 (UPI) --I've been ROFLMAO ever since my son and his friends discovered texting.

It's not the texting itself that makes me LOL. It's the fact they think this is something new and innovative. I've got a little secret for them: UPI has been using something like that since its inception. It was called cablese -- and we never used capital letters.

Back in the old days, news agencies communicated by telegraph and were charged by the word. So, in addition to communicating with the fewest words possible, reporters also communicated with the shortest words possible. So it was easy for me to interpret the messages my son was sure would have me stumped.

Though I'm not old enough to remember the telegraph days, or even when news was relayed from one side of the country to the other over what were known as the east-west legs, I did have to fight for wire time. Fifty-five words a minute was the gold-star speed. We were ecstatic when we started using computers and could transmit to some clients at 100 words a minute. And high speed -- a swift 1,200 words a minute -- was heaven for those of us trying to stuff 10 pounds of information into five-pound bags. Communications between bureaus, however, remained at 55 words a minute and reporters had to slip queries and other information to each other and regional desks in short snippets between stories.

So the speed of today's e-mail, texting and instant messaging has truly been a revelation; the concept of messaging (as we called it) itself, not so much.

Which brings me to the saga of my son and his cellphone. He's never met a phone he can't break.

I got him his first phone when he was 10. He had refused to go to after-school care anymore and I wanted to be able to track him after school. Actually it was the original Motorola flip-phone I wasn't using anymore. Cingular (remember them?) had just started allowing people to buy specified numbers of minutes for three months. Seemed like a good idea to me.

The only problem was he could not always hear it ring. I believed him since that was the reason I had gotten myself a new phone in the first place.

So, when I was satisfied he had learned how to use it responsibly, i.e., not running up exorbitant monthly bills, I took the plunge and went over to Radio Shack with him and bought him a Nokia he didn't have to flip open. We got a cool little protective case for it and everything. Then he discovered the kiosk at the mall that sold alternate faceplates. It was the beginning of the end.

In about six months the phone had been taken apart so many times, it wouldn't go back together properly. It wasn't long before it didn't work properly either.

By that time, I was due for an upgrade on my phone and after playing musical phone numbers at the Sprint store we managed to get the upgrade switched to my son's account and came up with an LG flip-phone that looked a little sturdier than its predecessor. As a bonus, there were no alternate faceplates. For a double bonus, Sprint offered insurance on the handset. Obviously, they didn't know my son.

At this point, the child could not be talked into protective casings. It was straight into his pocket -- straight out too on a number of occasions, onto the floor, into a puddle, into the snow -- I don't think it ever fell into the toilet, but I could be wrong.

Sprint wound up replacing that phone at least twice.

Two years ago, I bought us both Palm Centros -- his black, mine red, so we wouldn't get them mixed up.

Trouble began the following summer when he went on a boat with his friends. As they were rowing back to shore, the dinghy tipped over. Son and phone got thoroughly soaked. We let it dry out for a couple of days before heading for the Sprint store. They couldn't bring it back to life, so they replaced it but the replacement had its own problems and a few months later, he took it back for another replacement.

There were a number of subsequent incidents involving puddles and beer, but we won't get into that.

Suddenly in early December, my college student began calling me daily, singing the praises of some of the new phones on the market and telling me his phone was acting up again. I believed him because I found it more difficult than usual to understand him.

"What do you want for your birthday," I asked at one point, figuring this is what he'd been angling for all along. "Should I buy you the phone?"

"Oh. I hadn't thought of that. I was going to buy it myself," he responded innocently. "Thanks."

OK. That was easy. Two days later I get another call.

"I had to buy the phone today," he said.

"Why? What happened?"

"It stopped working. Someone spilled beer on my pants last night. It hardly got wet. I don't know what happened."

LOL.

(Editor's note: Sometimes it's hard to tell whether you're tackling motherhood in the 21st century -- or being tackled by it. This is the latest in a series of reflections by UPI writers.)