The Energon Pub

DeathNoble wrote:No, no, no, no, no, no....... Teenagers with a cell phone is a great idea. A prepaid cell phone. Then you tell them its utterly useless until they make the money and they pump the thing full of life. Teenager wants to use cell phone, teenager can learn the value of a dollar by earning every single dollar.

Just make sure you keep a super-watchful eye on the kid once he gets that job. Not all jobs are friendly, and not all employers are good people.

I have been telling my sister-in-law this very same thing for years! She INSISTS that her 13 yr old daughter NEEDS a cel phone, but she MUST have the latest style phone with all the newest features, so the kids at school don't laugh at her..and they do not make those kind of phones as pre-pays. The child is irresponsible and lazes around all day after school doing nothing but watching cartoons and whining, and does nothing to earn the right to have a phone at all!
It is the newest in coming-of-age items for the youth of the world it seems, having your very own cel phone!

Shadowman wrote:

DeathNoble wrote:No, no, no, no, no, no....... Teenagers with a cell phone is a great idea. A prepaid cell phone. Then you tell them its utterly useless until they make the money and they pump the thing full of life. Teenager wants to use cell phone, teenager can learn the value of a dollar by earning every single dollar.

Just make sure you keep a super-watchful eye on the kid once he gets that job. Not all jobs are friendly, and not all employers are good people.

This is the right answer. Once you run out of minutes, you have to buy more minutes, and if you talk too much, they run out fast, so you have to buy a lot.

That's how my parent's keep my sister in line.

Jack's plan was to start at Lowes pushing shopping carts as soon as he turned 16. The store manager of the Lowes my husband works at started that way and he now makes over 100 thousand a year now and he is only in his late 20's. Since then though my father in law paid for both of my kids education so Jack is now planning on going to college. I guess he is going to try and get on at a dealership as a mechanic. I guess they can make a lot of money but it takes a lot of school too. Jack has always loved the hands on stuff rather then opening a book.

I beg of you, for your son's sake, don't get involved.

It has the potential to bring more misery than you can imagine.

When I was younger, I was engaged to a woman with BiPolar/Manic Depression (which no one told me about beforehand...) and her mother suffered from it as well, but she was literally certified as being insane on top of it. (I kid you not, six month stint in the mental ward, court ordered removal of her children, etc...)

In the beginning, things were moving along smoothly, looked like she and I were building a truly secure and solid relationship (with marriage potential)

Then her friends came into the picture....(come to find out later that they were okay people...but I'll explain that later.)

We didn't get along at first, and of course she decided to spend more time with me than she did them because she was always the third wheel and now she didn't have to be.

It caused some friction and for a while there...things were quite tense. She got tired of bickering with them and decided to spend even more time with me. (No, I didn't ask her to, but I most certainly didn't turn her away.)

Her mother started trying to intervene and start screaming at me, limiting my access to her, etc.

So after a slew of battles, she and I talked it over and decided that it would be better for her to move in with me and we'll just live together since we were planning on getting married and we were trying for a family anyway.

Things were great in the first few weeks, then the phonecalls came. Her friends were begging her to come back, they were saying how her mother was telling them that I was the reason she threw out their relationship, etc. Same old crap, different day.

Finally her mother came and took her from my house and I told her that if she walked out the door, it was over. She of course went because her mother had terrible control over her. (To the point the state considered it abuse when she was younger and they had pulled her from the house, long before her mother's lockdown.)

I went to see her a couple of weeks later after being told I could never see her again (do you have any idea how much that hurts? I can't even begin to put it into words...)

They had her on medication (the prescription she wasn't supposed to be on, her mother's wishes) and she told me she didn't love me anymore and that I shouldn't cry about it, because she wasn't.

She walked out of my car, and out of my life.

Seven months later, I receive an email stating that she's found a new man and they got married. (that about crushed me) One good thing about the email though...she had gotten off of the medication, her mother lost all of her control over her and she and her new husband left the state (no one knows where they are currently, just that she's got a kid apparently and still married.)

And all of it was destroyed, all those lives involved...because a meddlesome mother couldn't let nature take it's course.

And no, I realize the mentally ill mother and you have nothing in common (let me clarify that right now) but the rest remains the same.

And it turned out bad. No longer friends with her best friend since 8, her mother can't see her grandchild (and that's a good thing) and no one knows where she is.

And pieces of me will always belong to her. You never forget your first, real and true love.

Let them work it out, if it's meant to work, it will. Don't force it one way or the other.

It turns out that I did not even need to. While Jack was up in St Louis with his girl friend his friend had called him and they worked everything out. His friend had come by the house to talk to me and I told him that they should not be angry with each other for long since they had been friends for so long. He told me that they were already talking again.

Damn, Autobot032, you have my sympathies for that story.


And as for Jack, I think this sort of thing is normal for kids his age.

Dark Zarak wrote:Damn, Autobot032, you have my sympathies for that story.


And as for Jack, I think this sort of thing is normal for kids his age.

I appreciate that, but fortunately I've gotten over it, even with the pain left behind. I'm grateful that it didn't turn out to be more painful than it has been.

And the second part of your post is 110% true.

My friends did it to me when they got girlfriends, so it's just a part of life.

The one ex-friend would always leave me to take care of and hang out with his girlfriend. It was really weird. She and I had become good friends and there was nothing more than that, but it made no sense to me that he'd leave her with another man as much as he did. I mean we'd spend hours upon hours together.

So life and relationships are weird and flawed but a learning experience.

good luck

An interesting cycle:

Boy hangs out with boys, wants nothing to do with girls.

Teenage boy hangs out with girl, wants nothing to do with other boys.

Man hides from woman in garage, bitches to other men about woman.



Eventually he'll discover that he needs guy friends, or at least non-romantic friends, in addition to his girlfriend.

You can talk about almost everything with the woman you love. Almost everything. That remaining 5% needs to be vented to a third party who understands discretion.

Caelus wrote:An interesting cycle:

Boy hangs out with boys, wants nothing to do with girls.

Teenage boy hangs out with girl, wants nothing to do with other boys.

Man hides from woman in garage, bitches to other men about woman.



Eventually he'll discover that he needs guy friends, or at least non-romantic friends, in addition to his girlfriend.

You can talk about almost everything with the woman you love. Almost everything. That remaining 5% needs to be vented to a third party who understands discretion.

BWAHAHAHAHA!

Yes, 110% true.

Thing is...we wouldn't have it any other way, and even after all of the complaining...the missus is the one laying next to you. For 30 years.