Extra appendage. Agh agh get it off, its killing her!!

I was in the middle of a post about how my daughter is more liberal than I am, and how did that come to pass?  When who should walk in the door at 1 am ? My daughter.  

The one hander

Now how and why did that happen?  I thought she was supposed to sleep over at a friends house?  But no, she was just walking around town for five hours and didnt have any supper.  So she came home at 1 am and basically says, "Where is dinner?"  Doh.

Yes, teenagers suck.  Although granted partyers do about the same but at 5am.  But she isnt a partyer, she is 14.  Or maybe I am wrong.   

At any rate, the point being, that she came home at 1am and what does she start doing?  Texting someone!!!!!   Argh.  I yell, go to bed, its 1am.  "But I"m hungry", she says.   Of course there is "nothing to eat" in the house so she wants to call McDonalds.  No way Jose I say, not at 1am, not delivering to my house at 1am.  

So she heats up some noodles and all the while her phone is in her hand.  I yell at her, "go to bed, or eat something, but get that phone out of your hand" 

"I m texting someone" is the yelled answer as if this is as important as saving the world.  She is holding off the international terrorists, world hunger and global warming because she is texting someone.  It is THAT important.  At 1am.  

To sound really sexist, but it really seems like the phone is an extra appendage of mostly young adult women and girl teenagers.  I notice that in my store. The ones who really dont know anything about music or my shop just walk around with their phone in their hand taking a picture or even filming. I hate being a museum piece, I dont like store tourists.  

Years ago, everyone would laugh at the Japanese tourists for taking pictures of everything.  In fact if you wanted to stereotype a Japanese person you made believe that you had a camera to your face. They would take pictures of any and everything:  inside stores, a light pole, an ordinary street.  Now all the girls have their phones and take pictures, more pictures than the Japanese ever did.  But these are young girls from a different generation, they never knew the joke about the Japanese camera happy tourists.  So now they are the same stereotype.... and worse.  Disgustingly worse.  

There it is in their hand.  ALL THE TIME!  

I want to take a picture of all the picture takers and put them up on my IG page, but I dont have an IG page being an old geezer who still only has facebook.  (young adult women /girls with phones in their hands never use facebook).  

Hasnt anyone invented an app where if you take a picture of something it messes up your camera, or something explodes in your face?   If I were a superhero I would invent that.  Tony Stark industries, invents the exploding selfie.  Or one of the super villains.  Green Goblin for instance and gives the app to Peter Parker who takes a picture for his journalistic job while swinging and the photo snaps his webbing and he falls.  Your phone catches fire or something if you take a picture of one of my records.  Please invent that. 

I had an exceptionally devilish album cover and I wrote on the cover that if you take a picture of this album cover you will be possessed by the devil within two weeks.   I really hope it wasnt a joke.  

But to get back to my daughter who is currently saving the world by texting her friend at 1.30am, so it is imperative that she does this, tell me how you can get anything done?  How do you make your 1am dinner with one hand holding a phone? Will they have new fangled TV dinners that can be heated up and eaten all with one hand so that people can be texting, my daughter, while she makes said dinner?  New Swanson TV dinner out now.  

Will it be spaghetti with ketchup?  That was made solely with one hand and will be eaten with one hand.  A mazing.  

It really does no good to yell at her as she just yells back at me that she must save the world with her texting.  "I m texting", she yells, as if this is ok because she is not on that dreaded anti christ Tik Tok which I hate even more.  

I wonder if I just stopped paying her phone bill. But people tell me that wont work as you can still send messages with whats app, you dont in fact need credit. Am I right or wrong?  My younger daughter doesnt have credit much of the time and it seems she can only read her messages but not answer them.  And if an emergency comes along and she cant use her phone to call, wasnt that the purpose we gave them a phone in the first place?  

Who was this jerk Steve Jobs or Black Berry anyway ?  

Isnt there some happy compromise some parents have developed which allows the phone service but disallows an overly amount of all the bad stuff?  My wife had it rigged that they had one hour a day on line.  But my older daughter figured out how to disengage that and I think it messed up my younger daughter because when we were out of the country she couldnt use whats app to call her mother. Or maybe I am wrong.  

Oh, I give up.  No, wait. I wont give up.  There must be an answer to this bastard appendage that grows on teenager girls hands and continues until they are young adults.   It is a cancer that must be extracted.  An addiction.  A, a,   

spaghetti and ketchup invention.    

Got the new Craven Faults album for sale on CD and 2LP 

I finally got the chance to listen to it here while I was writing

A Single Child

 

In the last two weeks my older daughter was away on a school travel with her class leaving only one daughter at home.  I thought I would put my ideas down on how having one child around the house stacks up against two.  

Positives. 

A.  A lot easier to concentrate on "this project" 

Basically you can concentrate on this and only this "project".  Its like the opposite of multitasking.  To go off on a tangent, everyone is so arrogant these days about multitasking.  Doing two or three things at once.  On one gadget talking to one person and working on a report on another.  Or whatever.  Big deal.  People talk to me saying that honing the multitask skill is necessary.  I say, go to hell.  Concentrating on one thing at a time makes for a better product.  

That is what it was like with one child.  I could channel all my time and love into one child.  Doing and planning things is a lot easier.  Dinner: no conflicts. 

Dynamics: no conflicts. This is important because with two or more there is always dynamics, lets say a yin and yang of doing anything, which you have to be aware of and balance.  Two or more kids, you have to compromise and remember who got what last time and whose turn it is this time etc etc.  And not upset ANYONE.  

B.  A lot quieter 

Since my older daughter is the whirlwind of eye and sound entropy , it was a lot more peaceful in the house.  I hope I have this meaning correct.  

C.  Time easier to allocate

Along with A, time was easier to plan. Ping pong on Sunday or some outing on Sunday if my daugther was home.  If not, then my time was for me.  Simple.  She was satisfied with my pancakes. My other daughter never is.  

D.  More relaxed and less tension in the house

I mean, there wasnt much reason to yell or nag.  The wind was taken out of my sails if I said for the second time,  "time for bed", and she said, "ok".  Cant argue with that.  With two and more.  Its like logisitics.  "But she was in the bathroom (or toilet) the whole time and I couldnt get in."  "It wasnt my fault." "How come she gets to stay up later than I do?"   None of that.  

To sum, there is much more energy for creating ONE GREAT product and not be diverted or diversified.  Both are bad in this case.  

Negatives.

A. You just dont learn as much

Having just one of anything is like looking at ONE cell under the microscope.  Its great for looking at that one specimen, but it really doesnt tell you much.  How it interacts, what to do when it does interact? Is it violent or peaceful?  You can get no information on how you are doing with this product because you dont really know how it will interact when it comes to society.  Interacting is two or more and when you see how someone acts in the presence of others, then you get a much better idea of what needs to be done and what teaching is necessary.  One... is misleading to say the least.  

B. It is bad for the ONE

Granted this was only two weeks, but even so, an only child, I have always maintained, is unhealthy for that one child.  Maybe they dont learn how to interact either and since they get the full attention they think they always should.  Sometimes they demand it.  In other words they can get very spoiled.  I wonder how all the one child children grew up in China under the one child policy?  Do they have a nation of spoiled adults there now?   I would be afraid.   

C. No dynamics.  

And again, without "others" you dont learn how to balance and compromise and share.  You the parent dont realize that you are lacking on learning dynamics.  If I might go off on a pet peeve of mine and compare it with silicon valley.  None of those people really know how the rest of the world operates.  They only know what they make and assume that if the whole world adopted their products everyone would be better.  They dont realize that all over the world people move at different paces.  In fact they are a community of spoiled brats and they lord it over the rest of society in that "if you dont adopt our technology you will lose out and drop behind, and that is your fault, not ours".  

On a small level, dynamics in the household is important.  Things can break down when there is a dictator that doesnt understand that compromise and give and take is a full community action and reaction.  

Dynamics, even though they are frustrating and sometimes head scratching, are important to get your head around and adopt. Otherwise it just becomes "me over you".  

So I guess in conclusion, it was a nice time and somewhat of a breather, but to live with this situation the whole time might even be harmful and counterproductive.  I sometimes wonder how it would have been with three kids. What I am missing out on.  But I guess the major difference is between one and more and after that it is just a matter of making smaller portions to accommodate the whole family.  What would four have been like over three?  And on and on.  Enough to have the difference between one and more. That is the important thing. And I have that.  And I think it was important that my daughters had the dynamic they had between each other and they will grow up stronger because of it.  

Please leave a message for me if you would like to use any part of this or the whole or any other of my writings.  I will send you my email.  

Thanks for reading otherwise.  

I didnt listen to anything while writing this, but I was impressed to learn that James McBride went to my college and I have an album of his.