The other morning I received a somewhat unusual text from my son, Clyde. It was unusual both for the time of day I received it (ten o’clock in the morning, right in the middle of second period) and for the subject matter: it was a dirty joke. Well, a moderately dirty joke. It was that old chestnut whose opening line is “She has acute angina,” followed by a vaguely dirty punchline. It’s a pretty old joke, but still: at least I understood it, which isn’t something that usually occurs when Clyde tells me a joke. (This may have something to do with the fact that Clyde spends the majority of his free time reading and talking about Japanese anime, and I don’t.) And so that is why, in an effort to encourage a non-anime type pursuit, I responded in what seemed like the only responsible, supportive way possible: I sent him another dirty joke back in response, this one equally well worn, but with a punch line of “It must be your feet, then.” It was only a few moments before I got another joke back, and that’s when I started to feel uneasy. I didn’t know Clyde even knew how to spell “Consuelo.”
Suddenly I remembered that we had just gotten Clyde a new phone, and that, for some reason, all of the information from both his and my husband’s phone had become blended. Same calendars, same music—same texts. I quickly fired off a text asking who, exactly, I was texting, and sure enough, got back the reply I was dreading: it was my husband.
Now, most people would be relieved to find out that they had been exchanging somewhat salacious texts with their spouse, as opposed to their 12 year old son. And I was (except for the fact that I find bad jokes easier to forgive in a 12 year old than a 46 year old). The problem, however, was that, because of the phones’ freaky mind meld thingy, Clyde would not have received my husband’s opening text—all he would have received from me was a random dirty joke. In the middle of his second period class.
It wasn’t the worst joke in existence—it was certainly no “Aristocrats.” But still, I’m sure when he heard the “ping!” and glanced down to see that he had gotten a text from “Mom” this was not exactly what he might have been expecting. At least I hope it wasn’t the text he had been expecting. In fact, he probably hadn’t been expecting any kind of a text at all. Which means that the notifying “ping!” was probably at full volume. Which, in the silence that can occur in your average seventh grade classroom (despite the student’ best efforts to prevent it), can be pretty damn loud. Loud enough to get caught, at least.
And then, as I started to squirm uncomfortably at the thought, an even worse thought came and settled in the pit of my stomach: what if not only had I just sent Clyde some random dirty joke text, but I had also gotten him in trouble for it? What if he had been caught getting a text in class, and had his phone taken away, and the teacher glanced down to see who was texting him and…
I thought about sending him another text saying “disregard former text,” but what if that was the text that got his attention, encouraging him to scroll back through his texts until he found the one I was trying to get him to “disregard”? And then got him caught.
Yeah, there’s no doubt about it: this year is shaping up to have the most uncomfortable parent teacher conferences ever. And, for me, that’s really saying something.