HOLD THE PHONE! Greg Hardesty tries to pry a cellphone out of the madly typing fingers of his 13-year-old daughter, Reina. "Who are you texting, anyway? Your entire school?" he asked her recently.
Posted on 01/12/2009 6:45:04 AM PST by Red Badger
Greg Hardesty didn't LOL when he got his teen daughter's cellphone statement.
All he could think was "OMG!"
The California man's 13-year-old daughter, Reina, racked up an astonishing 14,528 text messages in one month. The online AT&T statement ran 440 pages.
"First, I laughed. I thought, 'That's insane, that's impossible,' " the 45-year-old dad said. "And I immediately whipped out the calculator to see if it was humanly possible."
He found it was - barely.
It works out to 484 text messages a day, or one every two minutes of every waking hour.
"Then I thought maybe AT&T made some mistake on the bill," said Hardesty, of Silverado Canyon.
The reporter for the Orange County Register grilled his daughter on her texting habit - by text message, of course.
"Who are you texting, anyway? Your entire school?" he asked.
"Well, a lot of my friends have unlimited texting. I just text them pretty much all the time," she explained.
She messages a core of "four obsessive texters" - all girls between the ages of 12 and 13 - on her LG phone.
Reina had a karaoke birthday party, and while other people were singing, she was texting her best friend sitting right next to her.
She even texted her friends to brag about the high number of text messages she had logged when her parents got the statement.
Her texting soared last month because "it was winter break and I was bored," Reina told her parents.
Luckily, Hardesty has a phone plan that allows unlimited texting for $30 a month. Otherwise, he estimates, he would have owed AT&T $2,905.60 at a rate of 20 cents per message.
The average number of monthly texts for a 13- to 17-year-old teen is 1,742, according to a Nielsen study of cellphone usage.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
HOLD THE PHONE! Greg Hardesty tries to pry a cellphone out of the madly typing fingers of his 13-year-old daughter, Reina. "Who are you texting, anyway? Your entire school?" he asked her recently.
You stay amused, Greg...there’ll be more charming moments ahead.
LOL!
I’d flush the phone right down the toilet.
I'm currently working on a unified theory of American popular culture. I don't like where the data is taking me.
This says a lot.
Had that been my child, there would have NO smiling. Her phone... gone. Plus, she would have needed a pillow to sit down.
Most likely, I’d been put in jail for “abusing” her. Sheesh.
Texting her best friend—who was SITTING BESIDE her— this just blows my mind. Kids today need to get outside and away from computers and cell phones.
Hoss
Is there a job market later in life for people whose only ability in life is to have incredibly nimble thumbs?
She must have calluses on her thumbs..............
Huh? What's the purpose of that?
She’s gonna grow up with MAN-THUMBS
I was thinking the same thing. Does this guy actually ever talk to his daughter? That cellphone would be in the toilet if that was my child. There’d be no ‘trying’ to get the phone out of her hands.
He hasn’t met my teenage daughter. She’s in the running for at least 2nd place.
Which is why I have unlimited texting (that she pays for).
9 times out of 10 the reason they text someone next to them is because they are talking about someone in the area.
They’re both idiots, but at least she has the excuse of youth.
“Reina had a karaoke birthday party, and while other people were singing, she was texting her best friend sitting right next to her.
Huh? What’s the purpose of that? “
Don’t you know whispering is rude?
It’s the new way to talk “privately”.
I think text messaging is the dumbest thing ever thought of.
I had Verizon block them on our phones, I don’t know anyone that would do it and we sure wouldn’t!
LOL! Looks like we had the same idea for where that phone belongs. Loony dad, loony daughter.
My seven year old asked me if she could have a cell phone when she’s 18. I said, “Deal. And I am going to hold you to it.”
Parent’s fault.
Don’t give your kid “unlimited texting”. If you have to give them a cellphone with texting at all (why?), limit it, and if they go over it, take away the phone.
Parents are full of fail these days.
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