The Exchange: Day 5

Age and immaturity aside, we have another obstacle to communication. Perhaps you will have guessed it by now. It is so ironic I hesitate to say. It is Le Cell. Technically, Camille does not have a cell phone. His father assured me of this from the other side of the ocean, and I was elated. Imagine the old-school in that! We will be, like, talking and looking at each other like they did in the olden days. A kid devoid of vines, memes, feed, posts, likes and tick tock???

It warmed my heart and made me wonder: should I be laying in the airmail stamps? Turns out he has the same arrangement as Will—someone’s old hand-me-down iPhone that functions just fine when near “le wee-fee.” Camille’s was his mother’s. “She dropped it,” he tells me, as if clarifying my puzzlement looking at it. It is so damaged, cracked, dented, scratched—even shattered—that I think she must have “dropped it” while trapped briefly under a running of the bulls or rock-climbing in the Himalayas. Thing looks run over by a truck. You can see the control chip through the top right corner where an entire piece of phone is missing! Right next to the wound inflicted by his “friend” with a blow torch. In any event, his cell (along with Will’s) works just fine all day long to divert attention, delay willingness, and throw a thin layer of “done” over our communication. Sometimes they even look like junkies, mes deux, curled up in a fetal position nursing their feeds.

So I was not expecting the generation barrier to beat out the language one. But it does. It takes a while to show up. It was like that with our previous exchange student, as well. She brought a laptop, a tablet and a cell phone. Keep in mind, I am in the daily throes of berating my own children to get off their devices. And often I am stopping mid-text to do so. It is insidious in our house, and to be quite frank we did not need reinforcements. The Nacel policy on “use of electronics” is spelled out: “excessive use” will not be tolerated. As with our own children, we are encouraged to limit their “screen” time and to step in where necessary, giving warnings and ultimately taking it away if necessary. Great. Something else to police chez moi.

For all of you matter-of-fact folk who don’t see what the big deal is (“Just take it away!”), I’m sure you were the ones ripping binkies out of babies’ mouths so many years ago and making your kid sit at the table till the peas were eaten. Even if it was dawn the next day. I’ll bet you got the three-hour nap out of them at age 2, the shoes tied and teeth brushed at 8, and the award-winning science project out of them at 14, as well. There are parents out there like that, I know, and I admire them. I’m not making excuses. I am just pointing out the complexities of the situation rather than pretend it is simple, or—more importantly—pretend I can control it.

“Just take it away!” I’m sure you understand that these new humans are wired this way; pathetic or not, like it or not, it is a reality of their little beings. I sub at the high school and more often at two middle schools, so I am with these people regularly. Nowadays it’s as though you have to unplug them to use them, like the dust-buster in my hall closet, give them a lesson or run them through a chore sequence or a fact-finding mission (That’s tonight? What time? Who is going? What time will you be home? Are you eating dinner here?) and then you plug them back in. Docking stations. I am living the Matrix. There’s just something different about the way they come to life, to relationships, and to a sense of time and purpose for it. And even if you take away the electronics the difference doesn’t go away.

Barrier [berēər] (n): “a circumstance or obstacle that keeps people or things apart or prevents communication or progress.” Here, then, is the real cultural divide: the generation that knew a life before cell phones, and the generation that does not. I want to take a sledgehammer to them all. Put bluntly, they have destroyed our family time, eroded our industry and creativity, and made life into a shallow parade of itself. How do I feel about putting a $600 toy in the hands of a child? I am not a moderate here. It is madness and it deserves what it gets. This I say in full awareness of my hypocrisy in it. Many the night I shake my finger at children in their beds: “Turn off this light and go to sleep!” when clutched in my accusing fingers is my own infernal device. What they rob from us this summer is what they have taken from a full generation of our American children as well: not so much the ability to communicate, but the willingness to try. The desire and with that, the depth.

I get one night with him. After swimming and showering, he comes to sit by me on the sofa and I try to minimize the enormous pile of stuff I have been stockpiling for this moment: all the planned and anticipated conversations of home-school Jenny who may have failed to gauge her audience. Don’t worry kid, this will only take a minute…. maps and brochures of stuff to do around here and further-reaching VA activities and destinations (Shenandoah? Williamsburg??), my 65-page Shutterfly masterpiece of our trip to France last summer, family photo albums containing pictures of stuff we have brought up in conversation: Paul and Lacie, Mamie’s lake, when the kids were little, the life here I keep thinking I will find living under a rock if only I keep looking. Imagine sitting a 13-year-old-boy on a sofa to look at still photos in a book with a binding!! Got any daguerreotypes laying around here, too? Geeze, lady.

Most importantly, I want to show him the photos and scrapbook from my time in France, over three decades ago. I want to comb through the pages of a trip to the Alps, touch the pressed Eidleweiss, have him remark at the ski tickets (in August!!) and other slips, scraps and clippings of my own adolescent awakening in a foreign country. I want to unfold the yellowed recipes Irene wrote out for me by hand, of the foods I had enjoyed (and said so!)—oh, so many years ago. There would have been no internet to pluck them from and no printer to print them out on, only a “web” of the women who passed on their recipes to feed their families—living, breathing, and present. Only people, time, and space. Elements, which, let’s face it, make for a better journey, anyway. Not to mention a better gateau.

I get one crack at the map—DC—and then it is gone. He does not mind where he is or care to know. He does not appear to have an agenda. Where would you like to go? What would you like to see? Camille, can you take your finger and point to where you are, right now? He can. He does. I am silently relieved. These Google mappers, never a sense of  the larger context, of how the pieces relate or where you are in relationship to somewhere else. Never an understanding of true distance, either. When you are six time zones and 4,778 miles away, this is far. I don’t care what lies Skype will tell you. What if you are this far and completely alone? Ahhhh, well, then there is mother of all connections: mail. A letter can bring life and the anticipation of that letter is almost more fun than reading it. Ahh, the letters I have sent and received, reading and rereading and savoring every word.

A generation of Face-timers and “Insta” grammers will never know the quiet simmering of adrenaline in every cell, waiting on letters from home. Watching this little techie with his smashed screen (quite literally LIFE -proof, but in a different and sadder way), I know that I will have to add “stamp” to the education pile in front of us. Right under maps and postcards. Alas, his travelling sense—what they used to call wanderlust (?)—is dulled by the electronic drugs in him and his electronic ability to “check out” any time. His attention span is shorter than a snap chat duration. About 10 minutes and six pages into my glory tour he is done; something pressing calls from the bedroom upstairs and he is gone. He does not want to get to the bottom of my stack. He does not wish to touch a centime or learn about the French franc. He has never seen one and he has no need to. Unless it will buy him points on Ball Bast.

Twice during the stay I do what Nacel recommends: I take it away. Actually, we more or less mutually agree, the English speakers, anyway (sorry, kid) to have an electronics “sabbath” two Sundays in a row. Good for everyone, anyway. It is blissful. I’m not saying they sit around playing board games and speaking to each other in complete sentences, but the eye contact does go up and they certainly appear more alive. The go-kart gets hauled out for its hot dusty run through the woods, the lawn toys make an agreeable appearance, the boys go thumb-free from one fun thing to the next. This is my idea of electronics free time: not to rip it from them, leaving the attachment cord frayed and swinging loose, not to enforce a police state, placing it under lock and key with a posted guard, but to live so as to charm it away from them.  Sorry, too busy for video game. Not now, Face-time, I busy in the woods. Too tired to chat now, girl six time zones away or random cat-lover on Instagram. I “like” you but… I go-kart. I chase dog. I kick ball. When I come inside pouring down sweat I talk only to the people in same room with me and then I go to bed. C’est bizzare!  

Will has overheard me fussing about it so much recently that he is now willingly leaving his home. His cell phone. My outspoken sermonizing on the subject has sunk in? Two or three times now in the past few days —on the way to church, on the way to a fun lakeside play with a friend, or now even the pool, I pass by it plugged in and left behind—intentionally. I try not to make a big deal but inside I am singing. He (Will) is thus resentful of French boy, oblivious to the battle being won here, the heroic victory of mom versus phone. He (Camille) is riding along strapped into the front seat of my car, busy racking up points on Rodeo Stampede.

Until tonight. Done early at a Bible Study, I meet them at the halfway mark of a bowling and ice cream outing. Sophie and friend have taken the two boys for another of the many activities on our “Exchange Student Bucket List.” I didn’t want to crash the party, just view it from afar. I wanted to see what fun looks like when I’m not there. I say hi, I say bye, I walk out to the parking lot to see them off to stop #2. Standing between the two cars, Camille fishes in his pocket and hands over his phone. I’m afraid he’s missed the plan, like Sophie last summer, thinking we are all headed home. I’m afraid he doesn’t understand that I am not going with. I, and now this little war toy, are going home while they are going out for ice cream. He studies my face, listens, shrugs: “Eeese OK, eye dunt need it.”

Small victory, but I am elated to have both their “outs” plugged in side by side on the charging station tonight, while they enjoy the world, wholly present to the moment. What utter insanity that you could spend a whole life, in essence, calling someone who is not there (texting) or summoning someone who cannot come (posting). Imagine the novelty of enjoying the moment as it is peopled, here and now. The thought of it is practically worth the $32 Sweetfrog I know they’re going to pony up for themselves  (on my credit card!) at the ol’ weigh-pray-and-pay through the proverbial nose.

Ahhhh, the sweetness of the present moment!

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