I Lost My Mobile At the Mall Read Online Free PDF Page B

changed since Nan's day. She told me that her grandad's house was one of the first in Oldcastle to get a telephone. It was a 'party line' – where anyone could listen in to your private conversations! Imagine that!
    But then again, FacePlace isn't that much different. Unless you put your page on the highest security, anyone can drop in and read the postings on your mirror. So you have to be really careful what you say on there. But the good thing is, if I wanted to invite my friends to a party I could send out one instantaneous message to all 105 of them – although you'd have to be careful 500 people didn't turn up. (Probably not the Prime Minister.)
    Thinking of FacePlace and my missing mobile, I felt sick. I had to get home and see what had happened while I was out of range at Nan's. And soon enough Mum's event planner mind was back in action and she was heading for the door and dialling her mobile at the same time. Even as Nan was waving us off, Mum was getting advice on party flowers from her best friend Tina, who owns the Diana's Bouquet florist.
    Now we're almost home and she has talked the whole time! I suppose it would be a waste of breath to remind her of what she said on the way to Nan's – that it's rude to prattle on the phone and ignore your fellow passengers. My mother thinks that when I talk on the phone it's just dumb gossip and when she talks it's high-powered business negotiations. Now Mum's yakking about Tina's new bedroom wallpaper (orchids or birds of paradise?). I'd like to know what that's got to do with high-powered business.
    When Mum finally hangs up, I ask her about getting a new mobile. I tell her it's vital that I get one.
    'Well, you should have thought of that before you lost it,' says my brainiac mother.
    Yeah, the same way she should think about how much she needs her reading glasses before she loses them. It's an excruciating piece of mother logic and reminds me of what she always says: If it looks like you're going to be late, Eleanor, come home early. Der!
    'Money's really tight this year, what with the Global Financial Crisis and everything ,' Mum continues.
    It's exactly what Dad said! Do they get together and learn this stuff off a script? Then I do the 'personal safety' speech, reminding her that the mobile isn't just for my benefit. It's also so that she knows where I am at all times and she can speak to me whenever she wants.
    'You'll just have to use public telephones,' she counters.
    I point out that the only working public telephone in Oldcastle is the one they use to call taxis outside the London Tavern. Does she really want me hanging out there?
    If I am abducted by some weird cult she will be really sorry she didn't get me a new mobile. I won't be able to stop and call her from a public telephone when I'm bound and gagged in the back of a mini-van speeding up the highway.
    Mum laughs at this. She actually laughs! And then I make the point that I need to speak to my friends.
    How will I do that without a mobile?
    'When I was a girl, we wrote letters or just made appointments to meet up and kept them. Somehow I managed to have a social life,' she says. 'Besides, you still have your computer and you can borrow Tilly's phone.'
    Wrote letters? Made appointments? Is she insane? And as for borrowing Tilly's phone – how will I do that when it's already in use 24/7? And yes, I can use my computer, but everyone texts these days. That's just the way it is.
    :-> AAMOF
    Then I have to endure Part II of the lecture on the Days Before Mobile Phones Were Invented. Does this make any sense to anyone? I mean, how far do we want to go with this logic? Back to the days before the invention of the actual telephone, the television, the car, the steam train . . . the wheel? Was there some Neanderthal cave mother lecturing her daughter about the Days Before Fire Was Invented: We had to eat everything raw, and a good thing too!
    After listening to her rave on about how she used to take personal