Talking to a young child on the phone is an exercise in patience. The endless grueling-marathon kind of exercise that gets you nowhere fast and ends with you repeatedly jamming your smart phone into your eye socket.
Yesterday I was out on errands and needed to pick up a prescription at the pharmacy for my husband. There was confusion about a refill so I had to call him on my cell phone immediately to clear things up.
Unfortunately, my 11-year-old son answered.
For some reason whenever he talks on the phone he morphs into a hyped-up sugar-crazed maniac who has forgotten he should adjust his voice on the phone to lower then 10,000 decibels.
Him: HELLO?
Me: Hey, is Daddy there?
Him: [shouting] HELLO!
Me: Is Daddy right there? Can you put him on the phone?
Him: HI! [giggling]
Me: Is Daddy th-
Him: HI MOM! [hysterical laughing]
Me: [looking down at cell phone] Who IS this?
Him: CANDY!
Me: Put. Daddy. On. The. Phone.
Him: CANDY!
Me: What?
Him: Are you getting us candy?
Me: What? No.
Him: CANDY!
Me: No! No candy! Will you hand the phone to Daddy now?
[handing phone over, more giggling in background]
[my seven-year-old daughter breathing heavy into phone]
Her: [yelling at the top of her lungs] I LIKE SKITTLES!
Hmm…perhaps I should take the kids on a fun little visit to the ear doctor tomorrow.
Me: Give the phone to Daddy.
Her: DID YOU GET US CANDY?
…and apparently both my kids are hopeless junkies and all that sugar has eaten away every functioning neuron in their brains.
Me: Give the phone to Daddy.
Her: You’re at the store getting us candy now, right?
What do they think I spend all my free time buying candy? That mom just lives in the pharmacy’s candy aisle? “Okay, kids! Mommy’s heading out now to camp out on that little cot next to the Snickers bars, just waiting for you to tell me what kind of candy you want!”
Me: Give the phone to Daddy. To Daddy. The phone. To Daddy. GivethephonetodaddyGivethephonetodaddyGivethephonetodaddy.
Her: [yelling] I LIKE SKITTLES!
Phone hangs up.
Well, I guess my husband will just have to do without his blood pressure pills. I’ll just replace them with Skittles, I’m sure it won’t be a problem.
She's A Maineiac 
May I recommend you also visit the adult candy department while you’re there. I believe you’ll find it’s labeled Prozac or Xanax or something like that.
I like the way you think, Al.
One track minds! I’m sure skittles cure a multitude of ailments, so your husband should be a-ok.
I remember hating to talk on the phone when I was a kid. And then I turned 14.
What’s weird is I hate talking on the phone now. Everything comes full circle, RP.
LOL………..oh kids and phones! What a hoot! My grandkids fight over who is going to answer the phone then usually hang it up by accident (in SPITE of the numerous lessons I have given ….press this button when you pick up and do not press this button until you hang up) I will call their mother to see what time she is picking them up and if I need to fix them supper and the 3 year old has to talk to mom. Even though I tell them all……….ask your mom what time she is coming, they hang up when they are done, leave the 3 year old in tears because HE wanted to hang up and when I ask “what time is mom coming?” I get a blank face look and an idiot stare. It made me feel SO much better to know that other people’s children exhibit similar behavior. I was worried we were raising a pack of fools here! LOL
That’s the weird thing, both my kids are extremely bright and do have the ability to act normal in social situations. But they get on the phone and it’s like a switch goes off.
I know! Some weird electronic transmissions? LOL
Ha! Loved this. Well, loved that it happened to you and I could read about it. Hate when it happens to me and I’m too annoyed to write about it. Hope you at least picked your hubs up a butterfinger. Thanks for posting!
Well, I eventually did get the blood pressure pills and Skittles and took both of them myself.
hahaha! i think i must have called your house yesterday. i had a very similar conversation.
So it’s not just my kids? I feel better now.
i wouldn’t feel too much better. i think it’s just our kids. 😉
Where did we go wrong??
let me count the ways…
Holy cow. Sounds like while you were out, your husband was feeding them candy non-stop! My convos with the kids on the phone is more like trying to drag words out of quicksand. I ask questions and get one word answers or grunts. It’s scintillating. I tend to suspect that their attention may not always be on their doting mother calling to check on them, but instead on some type of video game character or movie.
I think the problem was we just had Easter baskets and it’s all about the candy now. My son normally doesn’t say much to me anymore so for him to yell CANDY and giggle a lot was a breakthrough in communication.
Can I have some skittles too? Thanks.
Like I tell my kids: no no no no no NO NO NO NO!
After that phone call you were probably tempted to hijack your hub’s prescription!
I’m beginning to wonder why I’m not on blood pressure pills yet. Maybe it’s because I drink lots of wine?
Oh, Lord! LOL. Kids have no sense whatsoever of urgency. I think we damaged them by always sugar-coating (pun intended) things so that they never see us really freak out! I remember being in the emergency room with heart problems and my son asking me on the phone where the Dunking Donut munchkins were. AY! 🙂
Oh see that is exactly what my kids would do. Or my husband even.
😆
Aren’t kids just so darn cute? Is cute the right word? 😉 I can see you need the patience of a saint to deal with children. I am famously very UN-patient. My poor future kids will feel my wrath…
Ooh, you have to have kids right now, Lily. Lots and lots of them.
Skittles and blood pressure pills are probably the same colour. 🙂 Keep out of the hands of kiddies!
My husband really didn’t notice the difference.
Talking to my niece and nephew used to be equally frustrating. The problem was exactly the opposite though. Looooong stretches of silence, punctuated by a hang up.
Hello? So how’s school?
*silence*
Did your team win the soccer tournament?
*silence*
I hear you’re going camping this weekend. That sounds like fun.
*silence*
Anyone there? Hello? Kids, I know you’re there.
*click*
Oh now my son does the silence thing too, all the time. That phone convo was the most I’ve heard out of him in years.
Skittles rock! When one has candy, blood pressure meds may not be necessary!
Hugs from Ecuador,
Kathy
When you get right down to it, all meds should be replaced with Skittles.
You may need blood pressure pills with more phone calls like that. So funny. Sounds like they already had their candy. My kids are terrible on the phone but it’s the opposite. I can’t hear them at all.
I think they are still riding the high of all that Easter candy.
Ha, ha….oh the frustration of kids excited to have the phone alllllll to themselves! I hope your hubby’s bp handled the blip. Well, with Skittles to help, he should’ve been fine. 😉 XOXO-Kasey
His blood pressure is fine. Because he never has to talk to our kids on the phone.
Men have it so darn easy. Guess that’s why I don’t have one! 😉
OH YES! LOL
11? And not knowing better than that? Sounds more like a 5 year old …
Normally he’s pretty smart so either he’s regressing or he’s accelerating into the clueless teen years.
Oh, yeah, right, early onslaught of puberty explains that …
Your son is very focused. He will go far. (I sound like a fortune cookie)
Leslie
I think his persistence will take him far in life. He could wear anybody down.
Too funny… a sugar high just talking about candy! So where WAS the husband? 🙂
They had candy over Easter and I think their bodies went into shock and fried their neurons. My husband was probably outside in the garage hiding.
Skittles…Mmmmmm…. What was your blood pressure after that conversation?
High. But I came home and had some Skittles and a glass of wine and now it’s still high.
hahahahahahahaha!
Skittles would help my BP, too. Unless I had to share them with two kids. Then it would probably skyrocket.
But Darla? It won’t get any better as they age.
Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!
No WONDER your husband needs high blood pressure pills; have you had yours tested lately? I found my BP going higher just reading your post…
I’m reading this at the gym and it’s making me laugh- thanks!
Just think, in a few more years your phone bill will sky rocket as they not only learn to carry on long meaningless conversations but text at the same time, not with you though. You will look back on these conversations with a degree of nostalgia. I know, weird right?
In the meantime, I am certain chocolate will cure what ails both you and your husband.
Ha – you know, this is exactly the type of stuff that I find hilarious and cute, but if it was my kids doing this to me, I’d be hollering and likely give them a hard time when I got home. I love kids.
See, this is really your husband’s fault. You should definitely replace the BP medication with Skittles as punishment for him even allowing your children to answer the phone in the first place. If you really want to kill him after that, just have him leave the house, call home, and have to talk to your kids. This should solve most of your problems, Xanax-free. 😉
The sad thing is we get just like that when we’re old too. Some of the conversations I’ve had with deaf elderly people recently are almost exactly the same except for the candy.
I’m on a business trip right now and was just commenting to someone that my 13 year old daughter is becoming pleasant to talk to on the phone now. My conversations with my 10 and 5 year old sons are awkward with lots of long pauses and brief one word answers. Plus, their voices are hard to understand. I swear they soften their voices on the phone. I love my kids but I’d just as soon *not* talk to them on the phone. It’s quite frustrating.
Oh, I also love it when they say, “Okay, bye, Mommy” and then head off with the phone no longer at their ear and me wondering if they are planning to hang up or hand it off to someone else.
Hysterical, Darla. That conversation just upped Daddy’s blood pressure – and yours, I’m sure. 😉
This made me laugh, this made me laugh a lot. Thank you Darla, I was having a horrific day. Followed!