Claire Adele and I went to see her high school's production of the Disney Musical, The Little Mermaid Wednesday night. It was adorable, and perhaps the humor was a little more biting than in the movie. One of my favorite lines was from Ursula, the villainesse:
Ursula: I forgot there is one thing more powerful than the black magic of my shell...
Flotsam: True love?
Ursula: No. Teenage hormones.
Which got me thinking as I put my daughter on the bus for a high school band trip yesterday. What kind of fraternization would occur on this trip? I was guessing not too much, as the trip would be mostly during daylight hours.
They went to Ellensburg, which is about two hours from Seattle. The estimated arrival time home was 8:00 p.m.. Jack, the Boy and I went to an early dinner in case the busses got back sooner than expected. We weren't too worried, though. If the busses came back early enough, she could have walked home.
During dinner, Claire Adele texted us. The group was going to be delayed due to an accident on I-90 that closed down the westbound lanes. Instead of arriving in Seattle at 8:00, they would likely leave Ellensburg at 8:00. The highway finally opened, but was slow as it was down to one lane. There was a period of 30 minutes where the bus didn't move. Jack picked her up at the high school at 1:45 a.m..
Between the time she found us she was delayed and getting home, she texted us 24 times and called us twice. I am not complaining about her over-communication, though I was worried her phone would run out of change and she wouldn't be able to reach us to tell us to pick her up. By the end of the night, her battery level was 3%.
I was glad I didn't have to chaperone a bus load of high schoolers on an unexpected 5-plus hour ride. I wondered how much fraternizing might occur, but then I thought of my daughter texting me every 20 minutes with an update. This raised the question: are smartphones more powerful than teenage hormones? All of these kids probably had their noses glued to their screens, unaware of members of the opposite sex (or same sex, depending on one's preferences). How do kids date these days if they spend so much time looking at their smart phones? When I was growing up, we couldn't hide behind a screen. I wonder if there is a decrease in teen promiscuity and pregnancies for kids with smartphones. While I think there is a thing as too much promiscuity, I also think it is kind of sad if they miss out on interesting relationships because they can't connect in the real world.
I asked my daughter if everyone looked at their phones on the bus the whole time, or if they talked to each other. She said it was mixed. By late in the evening, everyone's battery was almost run down. They had no choice then but to communicate the old fashioned way: face-to-face.
Who knows where it might have lead?
This blog is about the little and big thoughts that pop into my head. I once read that when Flannery O'Connor walked into a bookstore, she would want to edit her published works with a red pen. In the digital world, we have the luxury of tweaking things up after we've hit the publish button. I can be a perfectionist/procrastinator, where waiting for the ideal means little gets done. Here I will share what is not--and likely will never be--perfect.
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