The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

I read in the news the other day that the average kid text messages 200 times per day.  You might be skeptical of that number … unless you’ve sat in a room with some of these nimble fingerers.  They will ignore an incoming meteor before they put down their I-phone or whatever device their parents have empowered them with.  Hell, I even see the folks now just as addicted, drifting off from our conversation to check an incoming text message.

200 messages!  The phone companies must be making a gazillion bucks on our kids.  They’re making nearly as much on their folks.

People ask me — well, people who don’t know me, ask me— what my cellphone number is.  When I tell them I don’t really have one, they look at me now like I just walked out of a jungle in Southendzonia, possibly the Missing Link between apes and Cellular Magnon Man.  They check for opposing thumbs, incipient language skills, tool usage.  Sadly, I fare poorly.

But in my defense, I have a telephone.  Which, I point out, is connected to a digital answering machine and a computer modem.  I receive and send e-mails.  I can surf the Web.  I just don’t happen to do it 24/7.  I don’t want to be that connected.  I don’t want to send or receive text messages 200 times a day.  I’m just not that social an animal  — and if that makes me maladjusted or by definition, sociopathic, I guess I will plead guilty on Facebook.

You know, when I join.  Right after I buy my I-phone.  The day after hell freezes over.

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