‘I don’t want you looking at my timeline!’
It sounds like a line from a futuristic science fiction movie, but I swear it’s straight from my daily life as a mom in the year 2013.
Last Friday I was busy in the kitchen, having my cake and eating it too, when the phone rang. It turned out to be my eldest son’s ex-girlfriend, who dumped him because she wanted to see if the grass was indeed greener on the other side. Even though I don’t feel very warm and fuzzy towards her, I obediently took the phone up to my son’s bedroom. After I’d handed him the phone, I lingered a bit, hoping to catch some interesting soundbites. Yes, I was trying to eavesdrop, so sue me! A mom has got to get her intel somehow.
But I was out of luck, because my son firmly closed the door on me. I cursed my luck and the bad timing for my parenting skills to finally pay off. Because for years I’ve been shouting: ‘Close the door behind you!’ to no avail. And nów when I dídn’t want him to close it, he did… Typical! So I went downstairs, back to my natural habitat: the kitchen.
After about a quarter of an hour my son came down, returning the phone
‘Well?’ I asked gently. ‘What did she want to talk to you about?’
‘She was angry, because she thought I’d been looking at her timeline,’ he shrugged. ‘But I think she had blocked me, or I her.’
‘But that means you cán’t look at her timeline, can’t you?’ I said, because I’m very ‘with it’.
‘No, that’s right. I don’t get it either,’ he mumbled.
And then he went back upstairs.
To his own timeline.
