Tlk 2 me, in 160 characters or less please

OMG, teens like 2 TXT a lot. More than half of all teens text on a daily basis, according to a study by the Pew Internet & American Life Project. The average teen sends and/or receives 50 texts per day and more than a third of them top triple digits each day, according to a story in The San Francisco Chronicle. My 15-year-old son helps skew the numbers upward, sending and receiving thousands of texts each month. As of this evening, he has sent or received 7,601 messages since last month's bill. When I heard that number I wanted to LOL. It hasn't been a month since that last bill, so he's averaging at least 253 texts per day. Assuming he is awake 15 hours per day, that's an average of 16 per hour or .28 per minute. I hardly have .28 thoughts per minute throughout the day, much less .28 things I want to text to or receive from someone. But that's the dominant form of communication for today's teens. If I want to reach my children to tell them or ask them or remind them of something, more often than not I'll send them a text. My wife and I communicate by text if we're otherwise occupied. Even my parents, who are retired, are texting machines. It's new the way to send birthday wishes and grocery lists. It's a great way to tell my baseball team about rainouts. Forget sending out invitations to a party. I'll send a text. If a person is not a close enough acquaintance to be listed on my cell phone, they probably won't be on my invite list. 2 bad 4 them, I guess.

Family time ... shocking

This just in: Within 10 minutes, my entire four-person family will be together under the same roof, eating dinner together and then sitting in front of the fireplace on a chilly, rainy night. Not front-page news stuff, but news nonetheless. With a freshman playing high school baseball (read: practices or games every day but Sunday, even when it's raining) and an eighth-grader winding up his school and travel basketball seasons and beginning his spring league baseball season and with Dad coaching all of the eighth-grader's teams, nights like these are rare and therefore special. My boys don't know what to do with themselves when they aren't busy, though nights like these are cherished in our family. Spaghetti and garlic bread for dinner; all four of us settling on the couch in front of the fire for some American Idol; it's the modern version of Leave it to Beaver. Enough writing, it's family time.