Snooping Proudly

My 13 year old has just returned from 3 weeks at sleep away camp. After a lunch out with our very extended family of moms and partners, and after a few minutes reconnecting with me, his brother, and his drums, he has crashed on the couch, his beloved cell phone in hand. Because he also had to madly text as soon as he walked in the door. In fact, he even picked up his phone from his nightstand (he wasn’t allowed to have it at camp), turned it on, and cooed to it “I have missed you so much….” Creepy.

I hope I’m not the only parent who reads their child’s texts and emails. I have not hidden the fact that I do it. In fact, I made it clear that getting an email address and a cell phone would necessitate that I’d do a random check. And, frankly, I’ve found this practice to be both illuminating and reassuring. Illuminating in that I can find out more of what’s going on in his life, and reassuring because what’s going on isn’t all that exciting!

On the morning of my son’s departure, after returning home to shut off said cell phone to let it rest for three weeks (I mean, it must seriously crave some time to itself after being manhandled nonstop…). I saw a text from a friend who is a girl and, fearing that she didn’t know he was already gone, read the text so I could respond and let her know he was gone. Reading her expression of serious sentiment toward my son, I was torn between my sister-girl compassion for confessing feelings and hearing nothing back for three weeks and my wonderment that my complaining, whining son has elicited such strong emotions from someone and wanted to know more. I leaned toward the former and texted her, letting her know I am his mom and that he won’t be able to text her back for three weeks. Sheesh, I thought, he’s got a pile of trouble waiting for him when he gets back! But maybe not, now that I got “all in his business” (to quote him directly) and may have scared her off. Sister-girl compassion ended there, though, because I turned off his phone quickly, before she texted me back and I wound up in a love triangle worthy of an afterschool special.

That day reminded me of the early days of his email address. I used to read his emails every day, making sure he was respecting my rules of email behavior. And this is what I read: 

     my son (X) to John: “whazzzzzzuuuupp?” John to X in response: “not much, whazzzzuuup?” 

     X to Bill: “whazzzzzuuuuuuppp?” ...

You get the picture. And I thought to myself, “seriously? Do they really have absolutely nothing to say?!” I became bored, and stopped reading for days. And then it hit me, or I should say that when I re-scripted these conversations in light of my own troubled teen years, I realized I’d cracked the code: probably each extra “z” specified which drug they wanted, each extra “u” specified how much, and each extra “p” specified the pick up location and time. I continued in this vein of thinking: counting on my boredom, after they were satisfied I’d stopped reading, they had become more specific about their illict behavior in their emails but I would never see them, all the opportunities to nip bad behavior in the bud gone, because I did not have the fortitude to outlast the “wazzzzzzzzzzuppppppppp.” 

Then I looked at my geeky kid and his friends and realized that, nope, they just really do have absolutely nothing to say to each other. And I should stop watching crime shows.