Donny, I don't think it's a matter of changing the technology back to where it was 35 years ago, but I do believe that some folks have their priorities in the wrong place. When is texting while driving anything less than insane? Though it's now against the law to do so in many states, there isn't a day that goes by that I don't see some fool looking down and texting on their phone/pad that is sitting on the car's console, thinking no one can see it, so they won't know they're texting. At the same time, there is a young child in a car safety seat in the back of the car. They're driving 65 MPH down I-95, texting, on the nation's busiest highway and only occasionally glancing at the road.

It's also illegal to talk on a cellular phone that is not totally hands free in many states now. There's a very good reason for that and recently a commercial on TV was released that puts that in perspective.



Since when is it more important to text/talk than to communicate and interact directly with your children? In this instance, I have some family members that thought their TV could raise their children. It's almost as if the day those kids were born, they were placed in front of a TV set, something like an electronic baby sitter. Then, as the kids grew older, when they got bored with the TV, they gave them money and told them to go out and do something else. They did, they took the money and purchased drugs. Well, you can only guess where that led to!

Now, one of their daughters has a toddler. The toddler runs around the house, breaking things, screaming it's head off for attention, while both parents, and the grandparents, have their attention firmly fixed to their dumb-phones. The child, who just turned three, has no discipline, no parental control, and no future. I don't want to see my grandson go in that same direction, Donny - that's why I'm intervening as much as possible. I'm hoping that I-pad will not dominate his life and he will experience the world first hand, a world outside a telephone company's hand-held, electronic, entertainment device.

You CAN make a difference,

Gary