Text Messaging

My eldest daughter is 14 years old. At the moment she is going out with a well-brought up boy who is 2 years older. They hardly ever see each other, which suits us as parents just fine. They go to different high schools and he plans to become a professional golfer, so he’s always jet-setting inside South Africa from one golf tournament to the next. Also, his parents don’t allow him to socialize much, because they want him to focus on his grades when he’s not playing golf.

About a week ago, he sent her a text message at night. He asked her what she was doing. She texted him back to say that she was on her laptop (not literally, of course) and asked him what he was doing. He said he was on his way home and he could hardly see his mobile phone. Being the no-nonsense kind of girl that my daughter is, she asked him if he was being driven home by car. He replied that he was on his motorbike. She quickly sent him back another message, which stated that he must get off his phone immediately and not reply until he got home. Thankfully, he listened to her and later sent her a text to say that he had arrived home safely.

It just goes to show that young people, even the ones with strict parents like her boyfriend’s parents, still do foolish things. Recently, I’ve seen two different images on the internet of car accidents where the car was completely written off and a caption that read, “Hope the text was worth it.”