This cell phone stuff has gone too far

Cranky Nephew, who resides with Cranky Cindy, didn't feel good yesterday.

I got home from church at about 2, changed clothes, then knocked on his door to remind him that he was supposed to be at McDonald's at 3:30.

I thought he said, "Uhhhh" but it was hard to hear him. He low-talks when he's sleepy, but he hears everything (ask me some time about the argument he overheard between me and Cranky Spouse.)

I walked away and made lunch.

I ate my lunch.

I watched the end of a Die Hard Movie, a panacea after a long hard day at work where I'm terminally happy cindy to people who are, (just occasionally,) shall we say, um, overly assertive in my general direction.

An hour later, the phone rang. Caller ID identified it as him.

I sat up straight and said "Hello?"

"Hellooowww wwoowwooph." Cranky Nephew said.

"Where are you?" I demanded, fighting the intrusive traumatic pictures in my brain, imagining that perhaps I'd been wrong, that he wasn't in his room, that he was out all night, not safely ensconced in his bed, and I needed to go find him somewhere. My pulse raced.

"In my room."

In. His. Room.

Calmly, very calmly... deep breath first ...

"Why are you calling me from your room?"

"I can't move." My limbic system re-fires. "Everything hurts."

"What hurts?" What if he can't, actually, move?

"Everything! -- My back, my neck, my ribs, my thighs, my arms. Practically even my fingernails."

And there it was. Even the fingernails.

Calm, breathe, yelling doesn't work. As I realize that I've been tricked into talking on the phone with a young man in the next room, who Can So Move.

"I'm hanging up the phone now. You need to open your door so we can talk like actual human beings because you are going to be late for work."

Well, you don't need the details, suffice it to say he learned the hard way what happens to one's body when one throws oneself head first (literally) into a 2 hour Kung Fu class. when they say stretch first, they really mean it.


The calling from the cell phone? It seemed to him a perfectly reasonable thing.

So tell me, dear readers, do your children (or other young people in residence) do this to you?

And if so, do you tolerate it, take it as an indication that we are, in fact, old, and/or do you make them hang up and drag their sorry behinds out into the real world where there are real people to bother and tell them they smell bad?

Or worse, are you one of those younger people with cell phone strapped to hip like Annie Oakley's gun, pulling it out and shooting off a text to people during meetings and phoning people in the same house? And if so would you please explain it to me?