Lessons from the Lake: Technology never dies

You know, when I was a kid, it was one of those things that when we went on vacation, it was a literal "going on vacation". Families such as mine would vanish from our local surroundings and usually not resurface for a week, when we would come back home and be able to tell our stories and catch up on things we missed with friends and all of the old newspapers.

But now--it's just not the same.

This year, we cabined down from my wife's family, with a cottage for us and a cottage for my sister and brother in law and their 4 month old. Despite the fact that we were about 10 yards from their cottage and about 200 yards from my father and mother in law's condo, the cell phones seemed to never stop throughout the week--just from the calls in between them!! Even when my brother in law, Caleb, and I went golfing, the phone and text messages were flying across each of our phones even while our wives were out on the lake skiing and tubing.

For my work, even though I was on vacation, I have some things I have to pass along daily. While I was not able to do my full duties (which I wouldn't want to do anyways during this time), I was able to use my internet-enabled feature of my phone to check the emails and forward them or "work" them in the mornings, and even did this while we were waiting on the boat or just relaxing outside near the dock. It seemed that when I had some down time, my first thing was to log onto my email via phone, and then back to vacation...It even turned into a situation where my boss called and left a message telling me stop working. That's a good thing, right? (My wife sure ran with that voicemail for the rest of the week :)))

As far as the boys were concerned, technology really wasn't an issue, though, which is a great thing. They could care less that our TV only had two channels on it or that the phones and text messages were going off seemingly periodically with cutesy little ringtones and alerts. The advantage to the technology we held was that they still got a couple of chances to talk to their mom, which I know they and she both appreciated.

While I didn't have the full capabilities or time to do any blogging--which I missed doing!--I came to this distinct realization when, on the way home in the midst of our 5 hour drive--I remembered counting the number of calls in between my wife, her sister, her mom, and the text messages in between that time, and it was so much that I basically asked my wife when we got home to unplug her phone (she didn't, and she got 3 more calls that night between the both of them). I'm not saying it's a bad thing, but what ever happened to "truly roughing it" or going on vacation like I mentioned at the beginning? I am afraid we'll never have that "escape" again, even if we wanted to. Are we lazy, or is this just what the norm is nowadays? Or am I stuck in a vacuum here?

Don't answer that question.

TAGS: Being A Dad, Being A Husband, Cell Phones, Dad, Email, Family Moments, Family Time, Family Vacations, Fatherhood, Parenthood, Parenting, Technology, Text Messaging
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