Well, it's happened again.  Today was the first day of school for our 11-year-old.  And upon arriving home from school, she did not at first regale us with stories about how funny her first-ever male teacher was or how much fun it was to see all her friends.  No, she lamented how left out she felt when all the other little sixth grade girls on her bus exchanged cell phone numbers and texted each other even though there were sitting three feet apart.

"I'm the only sixth-grader without a cell phone," she moaned.  "They completely ignored me for the whole bus ride."  Translation:  All the "cool" girls with the "cool" parents now have cell phones and I don't understand why you won't just get me one.  

My husband and I commiserated with her on feeling left out, but stood firm and flatly refused to join the growing crowd of parents in our area who hand over the latest cell phone to their elementary-school-aged children. 

I mean really, where is our daughter ever going to be where there isn't an adult present?  She goes to school, to her friends' houses, and to the horse barn.  And even if the adults  around her suddenly decided to drop off the face of the earth, "all" the other kids would have cell phones, so she could just borrow one of theirs to call home and tell us that she was about to be abducted by aliens. 

"But, Mom..."  It takes everything I have not to launch into a tirade about how ridiculous I think this whole little kid with a cell phone trend is.  Not long ago our 16-year-old daughter was mocked for her "pathetic" cell phone by a boy several years younger than she.  He said, and I quote, "That's your phone?  I had a phone way better than that when I was 9!"  For what,  I ask?  To call your babysitter from the school playground and ask her to bring you a juice box? 

Really!  So although it's possible that our 11-year-old will someday have to spend 10 years on the couch all becasue her parents wouldn't buy her a cell phone, we're standing tough.  She'll just have to stoop to calling her friends on the, uh, what's that thing in the kitchen with the buttons called?  Oh yeah, the old folks phone.