Dear Blake,
I have a smartphone, and I love its convenience. I check my email, texts and voicemail three or four times a day and always try to respond promptly. But I do not carry my phone with me every moment of the day. Some family members insist that the polite thing to do is to return a text message or voicemail IMMEDIATELY. They carry their phones with them and constantly interrupt whatever they are involved with to answer the phone, send a text, etc. For my birthday, one relative gave me a little pouch on a string so I could wear my phone around my neck wherever I went because she texted me one day early in the afternoon saying she wanted to drop by, but I didn’t see or respond to it until dinner time. Is making oneself available every moment of the day and night now required for good manners?
Signed, Kennedy
From Honolulu, Hawaii
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Dear Kennedy,
Smart phones were created to make people more accessible. But your family is taking it to the extreme, especially the relative that gave you a string to put around your neck, implying they’ll start a lynch mob if you don’t contact them immediately when they reach out to you. So, if they want behave like that, become even more extreme that’ll rattle their cages, so consider the following options. If they don’t answer within 10 seconds after you text, go to the police and file a missing persons report. If the cops say that’s too soon, inform them that all of your relatives are mentally unstable, and should be taken off of the street ASAP through use of excessive force. Or, if there are any typos or grammatical errors in any of their messages, demand that they get a GED, and refuse to interact with them until they text you an image of their verifiable “recent” diploma. And this idea might get under their skin. Ask really complicated questions and demand an immediate answer, like why doesn’t God have a last name, or does Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity contradict quantum physics, and you want the responses in Latin. But this last suggestion should be able to put them in their place permanently. The next time any of them texts you, emails you, or leaves a voice mail, respond with these words. “The quickness I respond to someone is based on how much I value them as a person. So in your case, I’ll respond at the turn of the century, or when hell freezes over, which ever one comes second.” I hope this helps.
Blake