You’re not that important.
Yeah, I know that may come as a shock. I’m sorry for being so blunt, but you need some tough love. You need to know that if your company let you go tomorrow, the company would survive. Heck, Microsoft is laying off 18,000 people and they’re not going out of business anytime soon.
You need to know that if you aren’t connected to your kids every moment of the day, they’ll be fine and dandy.
You need to know that your friends really don’t care where you ate lunch, who you ate lunch with and how cute the waiter was. Especially that last part. Yuck.
You get the picture, right? You’re. Not. That. Important.
Why do I say these cruel and unusual things? Let me tell you. Last Friday I’m driving on 114 near Grapevine. Traffic is flowing (thank goodness) and I’m clocking 70 mph as I change into the far left lane to pass some slower traffic. Suddenly, my day nearly takes a swerve for the worse. An SUV changes lanes without ever looking to my lane and almost sideswipes me into the center cement wall. Luckily, all those years watching Dale Earnhardt paid off, and I deftly avoided a serious accident that would have landed both of us in the hospital — or worse.
The cause of the near wreck: The driver was texting.
It’s officially time for us — all of us — to put the phone down when driving. Yes, I’m talking to you, Mr. I’m-so-important-that-I-must-respond-to-the-text-message-with-a-cute-LOL-while-driving-70-MPH-on-LBJ. Just quit it. It’s stupid and it’s got to stop. (In fact, the City of Arlington and the City of Denton have passed ordinances banning texting while driving. It’s also illegal in Texas to use a cell phone if you are driving in a school zone.)
Fast forward two weeks after my near hospital visit … I’m standing next to my daughter at the AT&T store buying her a new iPhone for her birthday. She scores the sweet white one with a gold border that allows you to use your fingerprint as a passcode. That alone is worth $299, right? Well, as long as she’s happy …
I’m sure my 15-year-old is no different from every other 15-year-old in an upper-middle-class suburb when it comes to her cellphone. She’s on it more often than she breathes. It’s quite amazing really. She’s on it while watching TV. She’s on it from the moment she wakes up until she finally turns off that bright glowing light and goes to bed. Sure, I tell her to put it down and read a book (“A book, Dad?”) or to put it aside during dinner, but you know that only works for about 10 minutes at a time. This thing is an epidemic and there’s no cure.
But what truly worries me isn’t bad dinner habits. What worries me is that she’ll be getting behind the wheel of a 3,200-pound weapon next year and somewhere close will be the 4-ounce iPhone I just bought for her. That’s where the rubber meets the road, literally.
When I see how often seemingly mature 40-something adults text and drive, I wonder how in the world we can stop 16-year-old smartphone addicts from texting and driving.
Here’s how one company is trying: AT&T’s It Can Wait program is creatively and aggressively pushing forward with a unique message, called Hashtag X, or #X as you would see it on Twitter. It’s simple. When you’re texting back and forth and you’re about to drive, you send your friend #X.
You see, statistics show that teens demand a text response within seconds, not minutes. If they don’t receive one, they’re likely to actually get upset at the recipient. That sounds silly (maybe not if you’re that silly adult who thinks the same way) but there’s a lot of baked-in pressure on the teens to respond. That’s why #X is so darn important.
Think about it this way: your teen receives the majority of their texts from their best friend, meaning that one person is creating the majority of your teen’s text traffic. That means if your teen — God forbid — gets into a deadly accident, the odds are their best friend was the reason. Sobering news to be sure.
I used to worry about boyfriends, grade point average and college entrance exams. Now I worry about the ridiculous world of text messaging. (OK. I still worry about boyfriends too.)
#X is something everyone needs to adopt regardless of age, but a couple of symbols isn’t going to solve the problem. So parents, please stay in the face of your driving teens (let them know that Texas law prohibits the use of cellphones while driving if you are under 18). Be persistent. Be obnoxious. Be a big pain in the rump. And be an example. We’re all in this together. After all, it takes a village to raise a text-savvy child.
Rudy lives in Flower Mound, sells stuff to make the house payment, spends weekends on dusty ball fields and recently had a GPS chip attached to his daughter. Follow him on Twitter: Manifesto10.
