Giving Thanks: I am thankful for cell phones and texting.

I will freely admit that I remember a time when you were always supposed to carry a quarter in your pocket just in case you had to call home. There were these things called pay phones. You put a coin in the slot and dialed a phone number. If your call took longer than 3 minutes, you had to feed in more change, or be disconnected. If you were lucky, the pay phone was in a glass booth with a door. Otherwise, you had to stand outside in the cold (Idaho) while you used the phone.

There were also these things called letters. You would take a piece of paper and a pen, write whatever you wanted to say to your friend that lived far away (because it cost too much to call long distance all the time), put it in an envelope with their address on the outside, stick a postage stamp on it (which cost less than a phone call at the time) and put it in the mailbox. Hopefully, your friend would get your letter and send one back to you, and in this way you kept in touch.

These days, I can keep a cell phone in my pocket or purse. I can call my mother or my best friend any time I want. It still costs money, but I don't have to have a pile of change in front of me to have a conversation. I learned how to text when my children were teenagers. It was just another version of learning to speak someone else's language. Now that my children are older and living away from home, I don't have to wait by the mailbox and hope they are okay, living off in the big city. I can communicate with them any time, as long as I remember to charge the battery.