Cell Phones

I have recently done a little shopping around for a cell phone. I work at night and while I am gone my husband spends a bit of time on the phone dealing with the owners of different sites that he moderates.

We currently have a trac phone. We got it several years ago because we rarely use the phone and a trac phone worked out to be cheaper than any of the other options out there.

Including the price of the phone and the cards bought to add minutes to the phone, our yearly cell phone spending was about $100. After that year we started buying double minute cards that were good for a year. So, for one year the face value of the cards would double. It really wasn’t a bad deal at the time. We didn’t use the phone much and were paying much less than we would have for a cell phone plan.

Recently my husband has increased his cell phone usage. When I am at work at night he is moderating different websites and often uses the phone to communicate with the owners of the sites. The frequency we were buying cards for the trac phone had increased significantly to the point that I thought it would be cheaper to go ahead and get a phone with a nights and weekends plan.

So, the search was on. I researched a lot of companies on the internet looking for the best deal. I had found quite a few but where we live the availability of a good cell phone company is almost nonexistent. I say almost only because maybe i missed something on my searches.

It seems cell phone service is more expensive where we live than the quotes I could come up with in different parts of the country. Then there is the deposit that most of the companies require. I have seen advertised where some cell phone companies have prepaid plans where you can pay in advance and still take part in the plans they offer with no deposit. However, this does not seem to be an option in my part of the country.

So, I tried searching for prepaid cell phones. The same type i’d been using for years, but looking for something with a plan. Trac fone offers various plans, but the price range for what i was looking for would’ve ran about the same i was already paying. They offer no sort of nights and weekends plan. At least not where I live.

I really didn’t think I’d find a prepaid phone with this type of plan. I figured I’d either have to suck up the costs of buying a couple of cards a month or give in and pay the deposit with one of the cell phone companies in town.

Much to my surprise and delight, I found what I was looking for. Virgin Mobile actually has nights and weekends plans at a pretty decent price. For about $35 a month we get 200 or 300 anytime minutes and 1000 nights and weekends starting at 7pm. I have seen advertised where many companies actually charge you to start your nights and weekends at 7pm. So, this really sounded like a good deal. A thousand minutes on a trac fone, even buying minutes in large quantities at the cheapest rates, would cost me about a hundred dollars.

So, we bought the phone. I expected it to be much like a trac fone. And, in many ways it is. But I was amazed at the features with this phone that trac fone does not offer. Real music ring tones and downloadable graphics. I have to say that I was pretty impressed. The phone we bought was a little light weight flip phone at a pretty decent price. I believe it was around $15. Not a bad deal at all compared to many I have seen advertised with prices this low only being available if you enter into a contract.

I was worried that we might get a lot of dropped calls, which was a problem in the past in the part of town that we live. But so far we have not had a single dropped call.

With all of the cell phone companies out there charging outrageous prices and requiring steep deposits, I think Virgin Mobile is a pretty good deal.

What They See

Anyone who has a child or even spends a bit of time around a child knows that children are little sponges soaking up everything around them. The things we say when we think no body is listening will be repeated for us, often word for word, at the most inopportune times.

The thing that amazes me the most is not so much how they soak up the obvious things. You know, the things they repeat to their teacher or to grandma that can flush your face with embarassment. Not those things, but the things their impressionable minds process and ponder. The things they interpret from the things we say and do.

We say and do things every day that we put little thought into. Things that we would never even imagine that our children are paying attention to and using to form their views on the world around them. Not even just the things we say and do but the attitudes and manner in which we do and say things.

We rush about our daily routines trying to get the kids up and off to school. Then they come home from school and there is homework to do and dinner to prepare. Next thing you know the day is gone and it  is time for bed. The day has disappeared so quickly and the kids are sleeping soundly. Then it’s time to wake them up and the routine begins again.

Each day you try to take a little time to spend with the kids to let them know you love them because you know how quickly time passes and that you have to cherish every bit of time you have with them. They need that little bit of time to know that they are important to you. You need that little bit of time to know you are making a difference in their lives that are spent mostly with teachers and friends at school.

As they grow, they will say things to you that can blow your mind. It becomes apparent that nothing is trivial to a child. Everything you say and do goes through their little heads and becomes a child’s idea. The ideas of their innocence polluted by the jaded world around them.

“Cherish time” is the little time we spend each day talking about what they did that day and making them feel good about them selves. Asking them what they want to be when they grow up is a frequent topic of “cherish time”. It is during this cherish time that I have realized that no matter how I try to influence the boys, encourage them, and give instill my values in them, I just can’t see what they see. I can’t always forsee how the thing I say and do will be interpreted by my boys.

Yesterday I asked my five year old what he wanted to be when he grew up. The usual answer for him is either Spiderman or more generally a superhero. This time he told me “nothing”. So, I asked him if he wanted to be a superhero. Much to my surprise, he said no. So, I asked him what he wanted to do when he was an adult. He said “stay with you”. It was then that I realized how words I had said had taken a totally unintended meaning with my son.

I have Tuesday nights off from work. I tell my kids that Tuesday’s are my favorite days because I don’t have to work and I can stay with them. Recently my 5 year old asked my if I didn’t like work. Without saying yes or no, I told him that I’d rather stay with him. So, now my son has come to the conclusion that I don’t like work and that staying with me is a more appealing offer than being a superhero.

This is likely not just from the things I say but probably also from the attitude that I have about going to work. So, I try not to be so obviously distraught when I have to leave my boys for work and be more positive about working. But it just makes me realize that even saying things to let the boys know that I enjoy spending time with them can be interpreted much differently than intended.

Brown Kids

One day my son comes to me and says “There are kids playing on our swingset.” So, I ask him if he minds sharing and he tells me that he does not mind. Then my son says “There is a brown kid playing on my swingset.”

At this point I was quite shocked. Race and color are not things that have ever been discussed around the kids. With many questions running through my head I ask my son where did he hear “brown”. Who told him that there are brown kids?

My son tells me that his teacher told him. Then I remember the permission slip he’d brought home a couple of weeks ago. They wanted permission for him to take part in a class about sexual education where they tell them the differences between the sexes, roles of the sexes, and differences among people.

I signed the permission slip not even considering that this would open his eyes to the fact that people are different than him and even give him the words to openly express this. I don’t doubt that he has noticed that there are people of different colors and that girls are a bit different than he is. But I don’t believe it was something that he had pondered or given much thought to at all.

Now after taking this class he has not only noticed the differences but he is talking about it and actually putting some thought into it. He has actually looked out the window and differentiated this little boy from the other two kids playing on the swingset because his skin is a different color.

This is very disturbing to me. I pry a little further and ask him a few questions. “Is there anything wrong with having brown skin? Does he have friends at school with brown skin? Are kids with brown skin different than he is?”

His answers aren’t very alarming. He has played with children of different colors before. We have black friends who they enjoy visiting because they want to play with their children. So, it is not so much that he thinks they are different from him. He actually seems proud because he now knows the difference. His teacher taught him something and he can apply it.

But is it something he should be applying? I tried explaining to him that some people might get their feelings hurt if he points out that they are “brown”. Though, among his peers I am not sure that this is the case since they are all being taught this in school now. I just know that I don’t like it.

There have been other things coming from this class that i didn’t much care for. My son has also made comments about things that girls can’t do. I thought in this day and age they would be teaching him that girls and boys can do the same things for the most part. It seems this is not the case.

It is likely that this is not totally due to the curriculum. It is quite possible that the teacher may have said something that led him to these beliefs or maybe he just misconstrued the information he was being fed. All the more reason to make me wonder if these things should be taught to children at such a young age.