Here’s another one for the curmudgeon pile. Last week my teenage daughter and six of her friends decided to do a group mall trip. The largest car between the adults held seven. Translation, we were going to need two cars. Guess who got volunteered to be the second chaperon? So before leaving I ask all the girls for their cell phone numbers and create a group chat. I say something to the effect of “Hi, this is Dave, Megan’s dad. If you have any issues arise you can text me back or the other chaperon on this chat whose number ends in blah-blah. A few minutes later everyone climbs into the two vehicles and we begin our 30-minute trek across town. Once we get there, the two gaggles of girls, begin making their way towards the food court. The group I was leading, which included my ditsy daughter, got lost in the parking lot. Yes, I know. A mall is a huge three-story structure that towers over every parked car in the sea of asphalt. Looking up and towards the mall and identifying which large chain store you are closest to, as a marker to find your car again upon exiting the mall, might sound confusing. What’s worse is that they got lost trying to find a door into the place.
IT’S A HUGE BUILDING WITH INNUMERABLE DOORS ALONG ITS PERIMETER.

It’s not that hard.

I finally herd my group together and forge our way upstairs towards the food court. So far so good Dave. No casualties. The other group isn’t there. No problem, we’ll wait. I can’t imagine it won’t take long. Fifteen minutes pass. I’m about ready to text the other group to ask if what happened and what we can do to help. Turns out they stopped at one of the stores on their way to the food court. What? We agreed we would all meet at the food court and they could break off and do their stuff.

It turns out that teenage girls have their own agenda.

It also turns out that the other driver/dad didn’t stay any longer than to drop them off as he had his own agenda. Okay, fine. No problem. I didn’t ask him if he was going to be camping out in the food court as was my plan. I’m not worried about him. He’s an adult. I had brought my little laptop and kindle and was set to do some reading and writing.

While the second gaggle is making their way to the food court, I spot a burger joint with a name that sounds like shake-hut. I order my food and find myself a place to camp out and eat and get my words on.

Life is good.

Time starts passing by, and I’m in the zone. Every half hour or so I come to the surface again to breathe, look around, and check my phone for any messages.

Life stays good.

The hours begin compounding and still no contact from the world outside of the food court. I trust this is a good thing. I mean with 7 girls, hopefully, they are all looking out for each other and not taking too much candy from the uni-brow cargo van drivers.

It’s now hour three. No one has come back to the food court, that I’ve noticed, I have had myself zoned out through much of it. Still no texts. I send out a group chat that essentially asks “Everyone still going strong? No issues? How much longer are you wanting to hang out before heading home?” I dive back into my laptop.

Ten minutes later I come back up for air again half expecting to have gotten some kind of response.

Nada.

Huh? I dive once more into my laptop.

Thirty minutes have passed since I sent out my group chat. I’ve received nothing back from the others but silence, even the other father. Do I have the right numbers? Of course, I do. While some of the numbers are new, the rest, like my daughters and half of the others, have been saved contacts in my phone for years now.

I send a test text to the wife thinking there might be something blocking my signal. My wife responds in under a minute. So what’s the deal? Are they all scatterbrained? Teenage girls live with their phones as if they were extensions of their noses. I begin typing out a second group message saying that nobody has responded, which is obvious and in my mind’s eye all I can see is them uniformly rolling their eyes in angst and disdain. I hold off on sending it and begin doing one of my favorite hobbies, people-watching. The mall is located in an affluent part of town and so it’s full of teenagers and adults with far too much disposable income. I begin enjoying the eye candy… the adults part- hey- that isn’t how I meant it don’t take it where it wasn’t supposed to go. I have a teenage daughter and… and realize this is where I need to change the subject before something goes really wrong.
Thankfully the subject was changed for me. Not five minutes into my eye-surfing, the posse of girls shows up at my table. It takes another fifteen minutes for them all to gossip and makes sure everyone is ready to go. Heaven knows the past three or so hours weren’t enough. We head for the door and, you guessed it, one of them is leading and gets the whole lot of us lost going out the wrong side of the mall. I move to the front and begin steering them in the right direction where our cars are parked. I get a few words in with other dad and he tells me he had left the mall entirely and found himself a book store. Good for him I’m thinking, along with did you not see my text? Whatever…

Other dad’s car is parked near mine and so we split and begin loading them up. We get onto the main street and are several miles away when one of the girls in my backseat says, “Blah-blah forgot their phone and they are turning around to go back to get it.” Eek! Sucks to be them. Glad that wasn’t one of my girls. I thank her for the information and once more ponder so you got that message, what happened to the one I sent?

The girls begin playing their phones loudly and singing to some of their downloaded songs. It’s garbage music but so were The Beatles and Elvis back in the day. I’m not that old but you get the idea. My music was more along the line of satanic 80’s heavy metal. All-hail-Beelzebul!

Several miles later I hear the words.

The words are “Oh shit! I can’t find my phone!” Shit? Your cursing in my car? Really? Granted if I lost my phone I would be unsettled too. Weren’t you all playing those stupid songs on them for the last five miles? Did you all not get the message that one of the girls in the other car had lost her phone as well and they had to turn back? How stupid are you girls? My brain starts hurting at the absurdity of it all. I manage to ask in a voice as non-demeaning and non-cynical as I can muster, “Do I have to turn around?” There is considerable rummaging and it ends with the phone being discovered. It was under her ass. How the flip did it end up there? You girls are idiots! I keep it to myself and get them back to the central meeting house without further issues. My volunteering part of this circus is over and I head back home while my daughter stays behind and as they continue their congregation.

Later that night my daughter texts that she is ready to be picked up and my wife goes to pick her up. The wife learns that she is also taking another girl home as well, which was an unexpected development. Whatever. Things happen. So my wife later tells me that after the friend and our daughter got in the back seat, she asked the friend where she lived. The answer was in the apartment complex that is across the street from another friend of my daughters that we know. My wife drives them there and pulls into the complex across the street and asks, “Which way do I turn?” She gets no answer. She asks again and this time the friend says, “This is the wrong place.” My wife asks “So where do you live?” It turns out that she lived on the next street over and presumed that the back of her place was across the street from this third friend. I’m going to break this down further. Let’s say the city has parallel streets that run East to West and have names like “D street” and “E Street”. The apartment complexes are on the North and South sides of these streets. It turns out that my wife drove down E Street to the north side which is opposite of the Southside of E street. This wasn’t the case. The girl lived on the Northside of D street and had no clue that D street wasn’t the same as E street. My wife drives her way around and gets onto D street. She then asks the ride friend, “So where do I turn in?” The girl doesn’t reply. My wife is starting to get impatient and is about to say something when the friend cries out, “Oh crap! I forgot my phone!” The girls in the backseat scrounge around and soon find it. Thankfully they weren’t all the way across town.

My wife gets home and lets off some steam about what had just happened and that is when I start laughing my ass off explaining my ordeal earlier with that being the third phone issue.

They have no brains.

These girls are the leaders of the future.

I am afraid.

Truly I am.

What happened to the good ol’ days of worshiping Satan with your heavy metal music?

😛

Tootles all