Each object represents an hour of media diet: the rubber duckies represent Twitter, the toy cars represent a play I attended, the mixed toys represent other Internet including email usage, the Thomas trains represent magazines and newspapers including paper and via apps, and the Starburst represent TV.
Finding a time to do this proved challenging. I had to wait for my husband to get back to the US since I have a child in school and after school so I am on call for any emergency. I don’t have a land line. I just started a part time job and my desk phone doesn’t work. Then my shower started leaking to the apartment below and the tile man has rescheduled twice.
The Monday holiday was the day and my husband will be home to meet him, and he originally called so that’s the phone number the guy has. Going out with a kid and no cell phone seemed risky. Luckily she just got her first journal with a little padlock on it and is really into reading, so some reading and writing will make up part of the day.
I turned off the phone as soon as we successfully met friends for dinner out Sunday night. They were texting until the minute they walked into the restaurant. I had given my parents, brother and best friend my husbands phone number for emergencies, even though most of the day today my daughter and I were out and about without any way to reach us.
After our dinner out with friends Sunday night, we came home and brushed our teeth and instead of looking at Twitter and letting her watch a video I invited my daughter to read with me in the bed. We sat together and both read two chapters of our books. Then I tucked her into her bed and she went to sleep more peacefully than usual.
I realized that I would have to have my husband wake me up, he would still set an alarm on his phone. I discovered last April that all 4 travel alarm clocks I owned were broken in different ways, the last one when it went off at the wrong time and wouldn’t stop during the middle of the night.
We went to the Museum of Science first thing in the morning, before the tile guy came to fix the shower. At the museum we stopped by the members ticket booth to get tickets for a 4D show (in addition to 3D you get wet and, as it turns out, get kicked in the back by a frog), and then went straight to the new Dogs exhibit before it got totally crowded. It was pretty good, the first part is a sort of archaeological dig where the kids unearth skeletons of humans and dogs living together 12 thousand years ago. One of the main things to do is find all 12 scents hidden throughout the exhibit, so you experience it like a dog.
We quickly discovered that by leaving my phone at home, we also had no camera. Twice she asked me to take a photo and the first time I realize this, and the second I reminded her.
We went to the cafeteria for lunch at 11am hoping to beat the crowd, everyone else had the same idea so it was already a line out the door. We got a lot of food to share and mixed a bunch of sodas at the self serve fountain. We got seats by the window, though mine faced a wall.
After lunch, we went down to the basement to take part in an engineering challenge. By now we were used to not being able to photograph our results, luckily they gave her a magnet to remember her participation. I found out that she has two other such magnets so far this year, installed in her school locker.
We went to the lobby Starbucks for a quick coffee and dippin dots and sat and watched the kinetic sculpture for an hour.
Then we got our jackets out of the locker and went to the T. We just missed one so there was a long wait and she asked to go “on your notebook” and wrote about how bored she was and “I hate this class”.
We took the T to Copley and walked down Newbury Street to Trident where I had a pre-ordered book I hadn’t picked up for a week. She read 3 picture books in the kids area while I looked at books in nearby sections, then we got drinks and an ice cream sandwhich in the upstairs part of the café. She was very upset I wouldn’t buy a toy to play with (“since we don’t have your phone”) I wrote out tick tack toe as soon as we sat down, and then she drew out hang man.
She suddenly saw a giant chapter book she’d heard of and decided to buy it. Then we went to Newbury Comics and got a graphic novel. We couldn’t find the pay phone that had been suggested to me, so we took the T home. I showed her a broken down pay phone on the main street near our apartment and showed her the emergency call box that is still in operation, and was used to report a fire a few months ago when the 911 system was down.
Back home, I read some of the Sunday NY times I’d saved and some of the book I’d been reading last night and she read her graphic novel. It was relaxing not checking my phone. When I finally turned it back on, there were no calls or voicemails missed, or even texts. I am about to check Twitter but I have no desire to check Facebook. I also realize that I check Twitter just to have something to read and I’m just as happy with a book or magazine.
In the end it may be more about society than the individual. Not being able to find a pay phone to make a single check in phone call was a bit ridiculous. I’m glad to know that the emergency call boxes are still there, and in use, since these interim backup systems I recall from the past, like pay phones, and people having land lines and voicemail to check, are truly gone now. It was different doing this challenge with my kid along and partly through her eyes, but in the end she got into it to and didn’t even get “on her ipad” until after dinner tonight.