One of the things I have always wondered about is why they call the conversation every parent must have with their pubescent child “The Talk.” I mean, there isn’t just one talk—there are dozens of them. And you don’t get to have them just once—you get to have them over and over again, as circumstances necessitate.
For instance, I was recently having coffee with my daughter, Clementine—or rather, I was having coffee with my daughter, Clementine, and her cellphone, because at approximately thirty second intervals her phone would go off, she would pick it up, stare at the screen, grin, and type something in. That’s when it occurred to me that while I had already had LOTS of “The Talks” with her, we had yet to have one of the most important talks of all: the one about cellphones and inappropriate text messages. And so, making sure I had her full attention, I looked her straight in the eye, screwed up my courage, and asked her straight out: “Are you LOL-ing?”
“What? No, I would never do that—why are you even asking me?”
I had a sinking feeling in my stomach. Methinks the texter doth protest too much, I thought. Still, I knew I would never get anywhere by losing my cool. So I took a deep breath, and in my calmest voice said, “Honey, I know you might not believe me now, but, well, as you get older, and as you text more and more, there might come a time when you are tempted to try LOL-ing. And maybe even ROTFL-ing. And when that time comes, I just want you know that it’s not okay to do those things.” She opened her mouth to speak, and I finished with, “And you may as well know that I feel the same way about LOTI-ing and even LQTM-ing. And don’t even get me started on LMFAO-ing.”
She glared at me from across the table, both her coffee and her phone forgotten. “You’re such a hypocrite,” she said. “Just this morning you BTW-ed. I saw it: you tweeted it.”
“That’s different,” I replied, caught off guard. Dammit, I forgot she followed me on Twitter. “BTW is almost like b/c; it’s an editing thing.”
She raised one eyebrow, clearly not convinced. “Well, maybe LOL is an editing thing, too.”
“No,” I said, “it’s not: it’s not the same thing at all.” I tried to steer the conversation back into safer waters. “Look, one day you’ll meet someone, and they’ll make you laugh out loud—for real. And it will be magical. And special. Like what your father and I have. You don’t want to waste that feeling on just a casual LOL, do you?”
“Dad made you laugh so hard you had to spit your wine into the sink last night,” she said. “I saw it: it was gross.”
“I’m sorry you had to see that; we thought you were in bed. But, in a way, I’m glad you did. Now you know what real LOL-ing looks like. And you can see why I don’t think you’re ready to take that step yet.”
“You always treat me like child.”
“Only a child would think it’s okay to LOL a guy she just met.”
“I told you: I’m not LOL-ing.”
“Then you won’t mind if I look at your texts.”
Silence.
I stared at her, shocked. “OMG,” I finally said, and then had to slap my hand over my mouth when I saw her triumphant grin. WTF: busted again.