This morning I woke-up to my alarm — my iphone alarm. I have to make sure my teen is up and ready for early morning seminary which starts at 6:45 am. This is my last child, number five, so at least at this stage, I’m not dragging a sleepy toddler with me.
I looked at my iphone, and realized I could just call him — from my room to his room — and make sure he was awake. Wow, that worked great. I didn’t even have to get up and trudge into his room and tell him, “hey, are you awake?” Of course I think that at age 14 it’s his responsibility to get up on his own, but come on, early morning seminary is early. We were getting up at 5:30 for the 6 am class, and studies have shown that teenagers don’t do well at this hour of the morning. It’s those biological clocks during the teenaged years.
“A teen’s life as well as his/her ability to learn can be affected by the timing of that first morning school bell,” said Richard L. Gelula, executive director of the National Sleep Foundation (NSF). “Contrary to many beliefs, the early morning sleepiness teens experience isn’t because they’re lazy. They are sleep deprived, but it isn’t necessarily parties, video games and other activities keeping them awake until late at night. It’s their biological clocks,” Gelula added. (NSF)
He answered his iphone, and confirmed he was awake. I closed my eyes for a minute and reflected on the convenience and beauty of this new method of communication.
This is the new intercom.
I remember when I was young, my friend, Mary Lee had a home designed by an architect that had many innovative “upgrades”. One of them was a whole house intercom system. Her mom could push this little button in the kitchen and talk to us in other parts of the house. It was so cool.
I love my new intercom, costly as it is, incurring a monthly fee which the old intercoms did not. But, I can take this one with me, even GPS my kid, listen to talk radio streams, read my scriptures, get the news and my mail. Now if I could only reach God this easily and quickly. Or maybe not, maybe He would call me to repentance. I guess prayer is as effective, less costly, but requires a lot more work and faith. Can’t I get an app for this?
*btw, some of the cool items in that house were a little trap door for the trash can in the kitchen, a walk-in pantry, a drinking fountain in the back yard, built-in blender in the kitchen, and Mary Lee even had her own walk in-closet with a vanity and chair and all. It was like Barbie, but even better. Now most of those items are outdated, or upgraded even more. But that trash idea is still a good one, you could push this little cupboard door in the kitchen and it would open to a full size garbage can that was accessible from the outside of the house in a fully enclosed closet-like area, and there you would just take that trash can to the curb. You saved yourself one step of taking trash out. I have yet to see that one today.
