Mum's the Word

Youngest and I make a data
PIC PHIL WILKINSON.TSPL / JOHNSTON PRESS

JANET CHRISTIE ,  MAGAZINE WRITERPIC PHIL WILKINSON.TSPL / JOHNSTON PRESS

JANET CHRISTIE ,  MAGAZINE WRITER
PIC PHIL WILKINSON.TSPL / JOHNSTON PRESS JANET CHRISTIE , MAGAZINE WRITER

Teenagers are notoriously difficult to pin down. Mercurial, they slip in and out and if you don’t track their phones, you’ve no idea where they are. It’s like herding cats, well, apart from Biggie Smalls who requires no herding at all, being hefted to my bed. But other cats. Youngest is a normal teenager who would rather be out with her pals than her parents, and so is currently more slippery eely than touchy feely with her mother. I don’t take it personally. I’ve been here before with her bros, so I know it will pass. Nowadays they’re happy to hang with me and not run for the door when they wind up in the same club next to me throwing my shapes – although maybe it’s the lift home at the end of the night that makes me popular.

I don’t blame her really. I have completely ruined her life. Again. You’d think dropping my phone in a puddle would have been a bad thing for ME, a major inconvenience in MY life, but you’d be wrong. It’s soooooo much worse for her.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

“I can’t believe you did that,” she says, over and over. (If only someone hadn’t stolen my earphones).

But now my phone is back and somehow the data on it is merged with hers. And the contacts. She’s not happy. Neither am I. I don’t want photos of gurning teenagers and talented dogs any more than she wants pictures of plates of food, the cat sleeping in the sink or the slebs I interview.

“This is having repercussions for me in my life,” she says. “This needs to be sorted. Now.”

“Let’s not forget who actually pays for this phone, lady,” I say, taking exception to her tone. We eyeball each other in silence for a while, both knowing things could kick off. But, we need each other, so we pull back from the edge.

“Tomorrow. We’ll go to the phone shop together, with our phones, sort it out, once and for all,” she says.

“Fine.”

“Fine.”

Ah lovely, a mother/daughter day out...