a 12 year old with a phone

The Boy turned 12 at the end of May. After many, many in depth conversations between The General and I, we ended up getting him a cell phone for his birthday. The biggest pro for me was that we don’t have a landline, so anytime we leave The Boy at home alone, we have no way to get in touch with him and, really, he has no way to get in touch with us if there’s an emergency. I don’t know how much a landline costs, but I know that we got his phone for free and we’re only paying $5 more per month to have him on our cell phone plan. And, we can see everyone he calls and texts, which is pretty much safer than a landline anyway.

We wound up getting him the Samsung Gravity, which comes complete with a camera and a QWERTY keyboard. He’s already taken full advantage of our unlimited text and photo package. On Friday, I got six different messages while at work ranging anywhere from “Wassup dog” to “What are you doing”. For the most part, he keeps busy texting me, The General and his dad. He also has a Flickr account (which I can give to you if you want to email me and you’re not a psycho), which has proven to be quite interesting. Most of his pictures turn out something like this:

Why, yes, that is a picture taken of his TV while he was in the midst of playing Kingdom Hearts. Or maybe Kingdom Hearts 2 – I can’t keep track, but I do know they’re releasing a Kingdom Hearts 1.5 in a little while and he’s dying to get his hands on a copy of it because his favorite character is in it… Seriously.

And, then, every once in a while I’ll get a surprise picture message from him that will be something as adorable as this:

And then I don’t get so irritated about the text messages that tell me what episode of Roseanne he’s watching while I’m on my way home from work.