what is with all the texting????????-Or why I think it should be banned

http://www.chatelaine.com/living/phone-addiction-put-down-your-phone-challenge/

We all have seen it or been annoyed by it: the texter. The person that no matter what has to be in touch with every moment in time. I have yet to hear anyone, even the most ardent texter say anything positive about it. yet, we continue to need an instantaneous society. One in which, every second of every day must be taken up with communication. the problem seems to be that more and more we move away from the communication that actually connects us to each other towards one that hobbles us to machinery. IT is everywhere: malls, theaters, offices and workplaces. even my workplace and I work in a critical care area of a medium size hospital. I find it difficult to believe that ANYTHING my co-workers are texting about or checking on could be more important than the care we are paid to provide. However, I have well established that I am a techno-dino, so perhaps my opinion is not as current as it should be. but when did it become as necessary as breathing to be instantly and immediately informed of absolutely everything that is happening with everyone. For those who say that they use it for work purposes, consider this: every minute that you spend texting about employment matters when you are not in the work place or during regular work hours, you are working for FREE! Can you imagine if your employer said to you , "I want you to work 6 days a week, but I am only going to pay you for 5 days at straight time." the labor rights people would be in an uproar. but I am willing to bet if you added up every minute of time you texted and answered other texts, it would not take long to add up to several hours over the course of a month. I say it again:" do you like working for free???
 Don't get me wrong, I text; occasionally, if I remember to charge my phone and mostly to remind my husband to pick up something on his way home. If it was limited to that amount i would find it very livable. However,  more and more the act of texting, rather than connecting us to each others, seperates us from each other. How? because it is doubtful that you are texting the person that you are with at the time you are sending the text. Furthermore, as people walk through our society cellphone in hand typing away, they are missing the very real beauty around us.
One day, when I was leaving a physio appointment, I sat to put on my boots. a young boy around 3 years old was sitting beside me, his mother beside him. She was texting; he was holding a book.
it was very obvious that this little man wanted someone to read to him. as I sat down, he boldly laid the book in my lap. Since my guys are way past the joyful age of actually wanting me to sit and read to them, I was flattered and took up the gauntlet. His mother briefly looked up from her phone and smiled and then went back to texting. My heart went out to both of them.. Her because the time that she has just missed will never come again and him because he was growing in a world where typing was becoming a more important form of entertainment and diversion than reading a story to a child you have given birth to.
Since then, I have declared war on texting in my presence. I usually say something like "please stop texting; nothing that you could be saying there is more important than the moment you are in right now." and for the most part the offender agrees with me. they are usually checking emails or having a quick chat with an acquaintance.
Recently, there was a story about a women who was supposedly out for a lovely Sunday walk with her husband and son. Apparently the day was so nice that it needed to be interrupted by her sending a text to her work. Unfortunately for her, they were walking on a pier and she ran out of dock, texting her way into a channel of Lake Michigan. Luckily, her husband and other passers by were able to rescue her. I am not sure if they rescued her device though; nor would I be surprised to hear that she had given up texting forever. since first hearing this story, Max and I have been keeping track of the "unusual texting" we have seen. So far we have seen people texting on bikes, skateboards (driving of course; Jarrett even got a traffic ticket for it!) and my personal favorite: a teenage girl with her feet in a hot tub at a water park in a hotel texting while her parents were in the tub.
Come on people! what could be that imp?? put down the technology and take an interest in the people you are with. Nothing, and I mean nothing could be as important as the people you are with and the moment you are in. after all, you may not get another moment and with the way things are going, Texting is becoming fatal!
http://ca.news.yahoo.com/blogs/daily-buzz/woman-falls-off-pier-while-texting-walking-michigan-193230713.html

Its not the climb up the mountain, it is the coming down

on the Sunday morning after Connor's graduation, when we woke up, Max asked me "so, how sore are you? You were really working hard yesterday." I replied that "it wasn't the work yesterday that made me hurt; it was the 22 years before." at which, I promptly burst into tears. i hadn't cried that much in the days previously or even as he got his diploma and medal. Connor had treated the graduation with such passivity, almost disdain, I knew that this was just the first, the first degree of many; the smallest of many more mountains that he planned to climb. As much I thought I had finished, that the task might be complete, he knew that it had just begun. there would always be a grander, taller, harder, mountain to climb. I aslo realized that, much to my surprise, it wasn't the climb, the going up that hurt, it was the decent, the coming down that really hurt.
For all those years, the "naysayers" told us what he wouldn't do as a person and what we couldn't be as a family. Sometimes, what were the worse moments when having Connor's challenges in our lives, were dismissed as being "no big deal." the times when the magnitude of his disability and just what it took to get him transported to an event, dinner or party was afforded (by some) as much after thought as a person would take in choosing what kind of donut they were going to order at Tim Hortons that morning.
But, we did it!. One day at a time, one foot after the other, one wheel after the other, hand in hand we climbed the mountains. I would be lying if I said that there had not been many tears along the way or that there were not a thousand times I thought about giving up, turning around and never going another step. Luckily, we all dragged each other along:Connor, Max, Jarrett and myself, we climbed our Mount Everest.

Recently, there was a news story about a Canadian woman who had died fulfilling her life long dream of reaching the summit of Mount Everest.As it turned out, she did not die climbing the mountain; she reached the summit and unfurled the Canadian flag. She perished on the decent from exhaustion and "altitude sickness:She had spent too much time at the top.
Crying in the hotel room, I knew that Connor had the right idea: you should just find a higher mountain to climb, a bigger one, a harder one. It is not the going up that hurts; its the decent and the sudden stops that really injure you!