Cell phones are making our kids soft!

That's right, I said. it.  At the risk of sounding like my grandparents, kids today have it too easy! Case in point, last week I bought a new Iphone. I LOVE it. The things this phone can do was the stuff of science fiction just a few short years ago.
And it got me to thinking about how technology has changed our lives in less than a generation and the cell phone is a prime example. In our family not only do we have a home phone, but we all have our own cell phones. They don't know it, but that simple fact has saved every teenage boy uncounted hours of grief.
Back in the day calling a girl was a big deal. It took days, even weeks, to work up the nerve to make the call and hours of planning exactly what to say. But it all could be ruined when an unexpected voice answered the phone.
And back, before the invention of cell phones, there was one, maybe two phones in a home and people shared them. Crazy, I know. So you never knew who would answer once you worked up the courage to dial the phone. (And yes i literally mean DIAL the phone).
Like everyone else, there were just two phones in our house. One in the kitchen and one in my parents bedroom. That meant that in order to get any kind of privacy the call had to be made from my parents bedroom.... which added an extra sense of weirdness to whole thing.
I used to pray that the girl would answer, but it could be Mom, or worse the little brother, or worst of all Dad.
Hours of preparation could evaporate in seconds with the sound of a fathers voice. A normally confident young man could be reduced to a mumbling moron if the wrong person picked up.
And since this was occurring in the dark ages prior to the invention of caller Id. There was often a note of surprise, maybe even anger, and in the case of the little brother an unseen smirk coming through the line. There was inevitably a few minutes of extremely uncomfortable small talk. The level of distress rising depending on which family member was on the line.
Now everyone has their own phones. When a boy calls my daughters phone they know it will be my daughter that answers. Certainly not me. In fact they don't even have to call. Texting works just fine without the awkwardness.
Now that I no longer have to worry about it, I don't think there is anything wrong with there being an element of fear, or at least uncertainty, being injected in the dating process. It show a certain level of commitment and seriousness if a young man knows he may have to deal with a gate-keeper, possibly an angry one that may or may not have a shotgun. It builds character, just like when I had to walk to school in the snow, uphill. Both ways.