Anyway ... we headed over there after the train wreck (i.e., the game), got some lunch, and started The Process. Hunter and Hollis were with us, and they promised to not be totally obnoxious and irritating while we were attempting to find some new outfits for The Sweetie Princess (TSP). Ultimately it got to be too much for them and they simply sat on benches outside while we Justiced and Hollistered and Aeropostaled ... but they were pretty good sports about things overall.
Bottom line, two hours into this little extravaganza we had not spent a dime. For those of you who read last week’s entry, you might recall that TSP is a little hard to please in the clothes department. The odd thing is that she’s not being bratty about it. Not at all. It’s like she has to be convinced to buy something. You really have to force her to go take some things and go into that dressing room and will you PLEASE just take them in there and try them on and see how they look and PLEASE don’t give me any lip about it I am tired of walking around not buying things. Wellllllll, this time I just let her do it her way ... which basically involves walking into a store, following her around while she glances at a couple of tables and racks of stuff, listening to her say “they don’t have stuff here that I like” or “I like that shirt ... oh wait, I already have that shirt”, and then following her out the door.
So we had traversed the entire Woodlands Mall and were headed out when I saw the Verizon kiosk. Background ... all of Hadley’s friends have cell phones. I think some of her friends probably were born with them. She has been asking me for a phone for the past year or so, off and on. I’ve always told her that she doesn’t need one (she doesn’t) and she always says that everybody else has one (they do) and then I ask her if she would jump off a building if everybody else was jumping off a building (she wouldn’t) and the game goes on and on like that. Well, the week before, I had actually gone to our Verizon store to buy one for her but of course the wait to SEE a thoroughly incompetent representative was 30 minutes, after which time it would be 30 minutes bare minimum to actually do something as complicated as adding one line to our existing service ... so I took it as bad karma and bagged that idea.
The Woodlands Mall kiosk, however, was completely empty.
We walked over there and of course Hadley jokingly asked me if I was finally going to buy her a phone and I said “uh huh”. For a minute or two she didn’t believe me, but when I told her to pick one out she literally started jumping up and down and laughing sort of like a crazy person (OK, totally like a crazy person) and then hugged me every ten seconds for the entire 40 minutes that it took them to add the one line to our existing service. 40 minutes. Seriously. I probably should save this rant for another entry on its own, but how hard can it possibly be to activate a phone and tell me it is going to be another $9.95 per month? These people are almost as incompetent as pharmacists. I bet if you went to Walgreen’s on a day when nobody on the entire planet was sick and you asked the pharmacist to hand you the bottle of aspirin beside the cash register he would say “Sure, no problem ... it’ll be ready for you in 30 minutes”.
Back to the story ... once we had served out our sentence at the Verizon kiosk, Hadley immediately began grilling Hunter about exactly how to use the phone. Hunter has had his phone for about a year and a half, and within about seven minutes of first opening its box he had already figured out how to send international digitally encrypted video-faxes of sequenced images he had taken with the camera’s phone. Those of you who know Hunter will understand. Those who don’t will just think I’m / he’s weird. And you’re right. Anyway, Hunter filled her in on all the details such that she was texting away in no time. Pure. Giddy. Happiness.
She does use the actual PHONE part of the camera occasionally. She called me at 8:03 this morning to tell me in the I’m-calling-you-from-the-school-bus-on-my-supercute-new-phone-and-my-friends-are-watching voice that she loved me. But more often than not, her fingers do the talking.
Y’know, part of being a good parent is knowing the right plan -- whether you’re talking about scheduling classes, organizing vacations, encouraging good eating habits (FAIL), figuring out the most efficient possible permutation for running the evening activities bus, or choosing between unlimited MINUTES and unlimited TEXTING. Paige asks me every single day, “What’s the plan?” Usually I say “I have no idea”. Because given the radically structured chaos that is Our Life, I don’t always WANT to have a plan. I like reserving at least SOME space for improvisation.
Improvisation where food is concerned? Oh, absolutely.
Improvisation on vacations? Not so much.
Improvisation on calling plans? Not at all necessary.
Hadley told Paige last night that she was VERY happy to have figured out how to do a mass delete of text messages because she had already texted two of her friends over 350 times. Yes, TWO of her friends. Yes, in three days.
Calling plan success? Check.
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