MR Writer’s Prompt: Social Media Woe is My Parent [Anonymoused]

I went to visit my parents the Friday after New Years Eve and my mother wouldn’t talk to me. I asked why I’d become the victim of a particularly scathing installment of the silent treatment and she responded with great frustration that she thought she’d raised me better. That I’d clearly forgone the value system she was sure she’d put in place.

Confounded and slightly miffed by her crypticness, I pressed — very sincerely unaware of what I had done — until she finally said the thing that officiates a young parent’s foray into what I’m calling grandfathered adulthood.

“You didn’t call me on New Year’s Day.”

Mind you, she’d spent the previous 25 years reiterating a Judaic truth — that “the Gregorian New Year is not our New Year and therefore does not need to be treated as such,” but also that I’d texted both her and my father at 12:25 AM on January 1st. Didn’t that protect me from the hyper-sensitivity with which most elderly relatives behave, though lucky me, like my 51-year-old-mother does too?

Apparently not — according to the womb carrier, “text messaging does not count as communication.”

Let that sink in for a moment.

That would mean that 50% of the romantic relationships currently burgeoning in America “do not count.” That Uber drivers cannot charge me $10 for canceling their cars, that I don’t have to meet said mother at 5:30PM today at the Le Pain Quotidien on 83rd and York because, MOM, that plan was one made via keyboard. And you initiated it!

But I digress.

This week, The #MRWritersClub wants you to detail, in the usual 500-or-less words, the single most disheartening condition of your parents’ relationship with social media vis-à-vis you. Treat this like a boxing session, let it all out, yell if you have to and pray to the Internet gods that be, that they don’t (or, I don’t know, do!) disown you when all is said and typed. Deadline for submission is next Thursday, February 5th at 12PM.

Vive le text message.

Image via Style.com