An admission from someone who grew up without a cell phone: My generation knows there should be rules, but we don’t have the slightest idea what they are. We know what irritates us; we know the benefits; we know that some online activities suck time and create teenage zombies. But we’re not comfortable creating etiquette rules and hope our kids figure it out.

When young, we had one house phone. Around the middle-childhood years, the nation transitioned from phone-company-owned phones to buy-your-own-and-watch-them-break phones, so we added more. By the time I moved out, we had at least eight phones because my father believed no one should walk more than three paces to pick up a receiver. (In truth, he loved installing phones.)

Our children

Here’s the thing we know that our kids don’t: It’s nice to be out of range. A portable phone means a parent can find you.

Today’s kids accept 24/7 contact without understanding what they’ve lost. If you’re scaling a 30-foot cliff at Cave Hill and foot placement is everything, your mother might call halfway up – and she doesn’t take it well if you don’t pick up.

If you get underage drunk, you can’t bluff for five minutes – long enough to say, “I’m pretty tired. Think I’ll go to bed.” You must fake an intelligent phone conversation at a moment’s notice.

The parents

It’s now possible for parents to never let go. My generation had want-to-be helicopter parents – ones that over-mother children well into adulthood – but it wasn’t technologically possible. Beyond an impressive set of lungs, mothers couldn’t call after kids pedaled bikes more than 200 feet.

As a result, we started thinking independently earlier, not because we were better or smarter. We simply had no choice – nor did our parents. Pre-cell phone, a bleeding kid went to the closest mother for a Band-Aid. If a son went missing, mothers called other mothers in a search for clues. If not at Mother No. 1’s house, there was a fair chance Polly would say, “There were here around 3 p.m., and I think they went to Scott’s.” Our mothers put clues together like CSI.

Parents today – and I don’t envy them – have to create a system that teaches independence in a time when their offspring never have to be independent. How to do that? I don’t know. Hopefully, today’s young adults figured it out by the time their kids got cell phones.

It’s no longer a matter of “I can’t call him,” it’s the much tougher “I shouldn’t call him.”

© 2015 SmithTakes.com