He's got a very good excuse for being late
Are We There Yet? • LORI CLINCH
The cell-phone era has introduced a whole new way of tracking and communicating with our children.

While my poor mother used to pop tablets of St. John's Wort and stare out the window with worry, I can verify the location and activities of my children with a simple call to their cell phone.

"So where are you?" I can inquire just for the sake of asking. "Who's with you now? What are you doing? What are they doing and what do you plan to do next?"

Then there's my favorite phone call to my young Huey, who happens to be flitting about on a Saturday night. "Hey!" I like to say for fun, "How's about you bringing me home a dozen eggs!"

The sad thing is that the kids can call me at any time as well. And as any parent will tell you, there's quite an array of phone calls that one receives from their offspring these days.

There's the "Don't forget I have a two-hour music concert tonight" phone call. The "If Bobby can stay out until midnight, why can't I?" and the ever-loving "I forgot my science project; can you bring it? And "Oh yeah! You might have to glue some stuff."

Since we've been at this parenting thing for quite a few years now, I thought we'd been through the whole gamut of phone calls and had received every kind at least once.

Yet, just the other night, we received a different kind of call from one of the kids. What it lacked in amusement, it more than made up for in excitement.

"Mom," our young Huey said in a tone that would have implied he was calling to shoot the breeze, "So like I'm sitting in a state patrolman's car."

I suppose there are all kinds of fun things that a parent could use to respond to that statement. Sadly enough, any humorous retort I had escaped me, since I had to beat on my own chest to restart my heart as I blew into a paper bag. It took me a minute to regain my composure, and then I remarked evenly, as if saying it made it so, "No, Huey, you are not sitting in a state patrolman's car."

"Yes, I am," he responded as coolly as you please.

"Now, Huey," I insisted as I tried to keep the shrill panic out of my voice, "You most certainly are not."

"Mom, I'm like totally sitting in a state patrolman's car."

"Are you serious?" and this is where the panic was setting in.

"I am serious." I was about to throw up, and yet I swear the child was talking as if he were telling me the time and temperature.

Being the kind of woman who doesn't receive phone calls from passengers in state troopers' cars on a regular basis, I wasn't sure what the protocol was. I mean, where do we go from here? Does one jump up and down? Should she frantically scurry about the house? Phone in a citywide emergency? Perhaps wake a dozing husband so as to inquire, "Where did we go wrong?" followed by my own personal favorite, "This is all your fault!"

"And what, pray tell, is the state patrolman doing?" I asked. After all, inquiring minds wanted to know.

"He's like sitting right here."

Thankfully enough for me, I'd spent the day doing manual labor, mowing the lawn and pulling weeds, so while I wanted to run out in the streets screaming, "We're all doomed!" my back was aching and my dogs were barking, so I just stayed in the chair with my feet elevated and matched Huey's calmness with a tranquility of my own. "Do I need to speak with this state patrolman?"

"Nah," Huey responded. "He's just giving me a fix-it ticket for my parking lights. I just wanted you to know that I wasn't going to make curfew. And oh yeah, do you still want me to bring home some eggs?"

"Yeah," I said as I thought of my dear mother, "And pick up a bottle of St. John's Wort while you're at it."

Lori Clinch is the mother of four sons and the author of the book "Are We There Yet?" You can reach her at www.loriclinch. com.