Is Emily Post in the house?

A few years ago, Daughter and Second Son put their heads together and figured out that I had something they didn't have but wanted badly enough to remedy the situation:  leashes. Actually, what I had was landline phones at my home and office that connected to cell phones in their pockets.

I had set D up with hers by signing the paperwork for it when she was 16 and too young to sign it herself. She had already had a couple of pagers by then, but she insisted that she'd be more careful with cell phones if only I would let her have one. I agreed with one condition: Since the phone would be in my name, I'd clobber her if she missed a payment and affected my credit rating. I don't really know what's gone on with it since then, but my credit rating has been good enough to borrow money when I've wanted to, so I suppose she's doing okay.

SS had acquired his phone on his own; he was old enough to sign his own contract by the time I got D hers. He had set up his phone with a number that he could break down into numbers that were important for him and easy to remember, so he was glad to have it.

I was glad for both of them to have cell phones because I could find them regardless how far from home they strayed; one of the first times I got really excited about this was when I called JaNelle on hers on the Fourth of July. She was in New York that summer, and for some reason the celebration was being telecast so I could watch the same fireworks at home—even better when I could call her in New York and see how cool it all looked from her perch on one of the bridges over the river.

But things didn't work the other way around: I could call them and find out what they were up to anytime I wanted to, but for some reason both of them had bumped into reasons to want to contact me but couldn't: if I was away from home or office, I was unreachable.

To resolve that, they conspired to get my own cell phone for me. D had all the information on "my" account (I still haven't done anything to manage it), and Sprint offered a "family plan" that would allow her to add me. Even though she was living in Los Angeles by then, she still had the same area code as me on the phone, so Sprint was fine with adding me to her family or circle or whatever for just a few dollars a month, and if there was a way to get my phone free, she did that, too.

The phone was my Mothers Day gift that year, and i have to give them credit for being clever about the gifting. SS invited me to a movie, and as we left the theater, the cell phone in his pocket rang. After he answered it, he handed it to me, saying, "It's for you, Mom."

I assumed it was Daughter checking on on Mothers Day, but I was a little perplexed at firts when she said, "It really is for you," but then she explained, "This is your phone." By that time, SS had quietly fished his own phone out of his pocket and was dialing a number, probably more to show me that we really did have two phones that day.

In my usual mom-too-long way of thinking, I mocked, "Oh, yeah, and it's the gift that keeps on giving! I get a phone now, and next month I start getting the bills!"

"We resemble that remark," D popped back. "We've taken care of that. We'll pay your bills for the first year, and next Mothers Day, we'll talk."

Long story short, I hadn't paid a dime for cell phone service until my recent trip to Los Angeles. In the interim, she had upgraded me from my first, very basic phone to one with a camera (and presumed capabilities to download data to my computer, but I never figured out how to make that function work), but not a QWERTY keyboard. I never needed the keyboard until she got a super deal on text messaging and I discovered that I could get much better responses from SS if I sent texts than if I called. Clearly, I was going to need a keyboard if I was going to stay in the loop. The replacement phone is still a little limited because I haven't decided if I want to pay the difference to get all the bells and whistles activated, but even at that, my cell service is a steal.

But what I'm still having trouble with is protocol. I've been around the block more than once with SS, who has a goofy habit of cutting off a call while I'm in the middle of a sentence. He assures me that he only does it when I'm starting to repeat myself, and I assure him that I only repeat myself because I'm not sure he's got the message or when I want to modify it somehow. Then he shrugs and tells me I'm getting all upset over nothing, and I get upset over being brushed off, and there we go again.

Sunday was a little different, though. I had decided that early November was a fine time to buy the gas grill Number One Son has been bemoaning not having, especially since the local Wally World had them on sale for about 1/3 off. The only problem was that the grill in a box was too big to fit into my little Camry, so I needed SS's Matrix to get it home. I had the good sense to text him on it.

He allowed as how he could make the run to pick it up, so I worked out an arrangement with the stocker to let him have it. I described the car and told the stocker he could match the credit card number on my ticket (which the stocker kept so the ticket and the grill could leave the store together; makes sense at some levels more than at others) to the one in my son's wallet to be sure he had the right guy. That way, I could make a quick trip to the grandparents' apartment nearby and visit with them before the evening wore on too late.

A few minutes later, I got a call from SS telling me WallyWorld wouldn't let him have the grill. I told him to check with the stocker, but he insisted the stocker was gone; the only people there were "two little old ladies" (neither of whom, it turned out, was probably within 10 years of my age). I was close enough to dash back over to straighten the problem out, so I asked, "Can you wait 10 minutes?" But by that time, he had cut me off.

I dialed his number and got his voice mail twice before I gave up and jumped in my car. Back at WallyWorld, he was long gone, but the clerk who had sold me the grill recognized me immediately and asked what the problem was. I told her what I knew: the stocker had put the grill on a cart and, last I saw, had stuck the ticket with it, but only the grill in the cart were still on the patio. My son had been by but had apparently disappeared again, and I couldn't "just go ahead and take the grill" because it still wouldn't fit in my Camry. As far as I knew, SS was halfway home by then.

I tried dialing again and this time, I got through. I had enough time to ask if he could get back to the store (while I was still there) and pick up the grill. I got only a word or two in response before he cut off again, but I was pretty sure the response was positive.

A few minutes later, I called again and discovered he was at the high school next door to the store, so I continued to have the sales clerk track down stockers to find the one who had taken my ticket. He showed up several minutes later, just about the time SS managed to creep across the parking lot to get to the patio area. (Does he not know about the alley around the back that gets there much faster?) The stocker had stuffed my ticket in his pocket and gone off to the back of the store to work on a shipment there, never thinking that we'd need the ticket to get the grill home.

I wasn't as happy as I could have been to see SS's smiling face when he finally showed up because I thought he'd been cutting off on the phone again, but I was pretty pleased when I got his side of the story: He hadn't intentionally been cutting me off or ignoring me; he had just forgotten to recharge the cell phone. And he hadn't turned and gone all the way back to the house; in fact, he was sure enough that I had gone to visit the grandparents that he had gone there, intending to trade cars with me and let me go get the grill at my leisure—a plan that would have suited me just fine and even gotten the milk home to the fridge faster.

But what I need now is the lesson on cell phone protocol: When Person A's phone keeps cutting out because of the dead battery but Person B needs to catch whatever she can of the status of a situation, who's supposed to make the effort to reconnect? And aren't car chargers sort of required for cell phones? And why am I letting him talk to me while he's driving, anyway?

Is Emily Post in the house?