Edited by author 08-19-2005 07:13 AM
Hi, Elaine! It's a phone for parents to buy for kids, not a phone for kids to buy themselves. It's a phone to give to your kid when you don't trust him/her to use a phone responsibly. It's a phone that says your kid is only a kid. It's a phone you don't want to admit to owning. On the plus side, it might be stolen out of spite but not because someone else actually wants it.

You could probably tell people it's a Medical Alert device and get some sympathy. Come to think, that would let you take it into classes, too. No one's going to know it's a phone, because it doesn't look like one (it looks like a cheap TV remote), although talking into it is kind of a giveaway. You could practise mumbling like a schizophrenic all the time so people don't know when you're using the phone, although that isn't really going to help your cool image in school, either.

Of course you can keep it to give to your mum when she gets old, has senile dementia, and wanders out to the shops in her slippers.

Or remind her now that you will get to choose her nursing home, and take a look at the latest news from Vonage or Skype instead; http://www.newswireless.net/index.cfm/article/2373 for instance. Maybe you can even persuade your school (or the kid with glasses whom nobody talks to) to set up a server computer for free wireless phone calls on campus. See what your mum thinks about that - no bills??? I think that has to be her main worry, not phone misuse and grooming.
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