I think it may be time to have THE talk again.

My son has had prepaid phone for about 2 years now, and most of the time he is pretty laid back with telling me he needs more minutes. I call him, I get a voice prompt letting me know he can't accept calls, I go online and put more money on, and then I call him and ask him why he didn't tell me. And his answer is always, "I meant to tell you Dad, but I forgot." Then I tell him that he can monitor his minutes as they get lower, and once they get down below five minutes he should tell me. He said ok which is child speak for "yeah whatever I'll forget as soon we hang up." I get and respect that.

But recently things have changed in the urgency department. First I get a call last week from my son asking me to help him setup voicemail. I just assumed all this time that he had voicemail, but clearly I was wrong. I interrupted the Wizards basketball game on television, walked him through the process for way too long, and boom the voicemail was setup and he cheerfully said thank you Daddy. I said thank you, and tried to back to watching the game.

Then on another occasion, I get a call (from a different phone) from Carlton, and he tells me that his phone is dead and he needs me to refill it. I tell him that I'll put more time on there as soon as I can..and two hours later he calls me and asks if I have done it (which he knows damn well I hadn't otherwise the phone would have worked). I started to ask him what the urgency was, and then it hit me...my 13 year old son is having special feelings toward a young lady, and he wants to be accessible as possible. Up until now, the talks about women and girls have been all hypothetical, but it appears as if he is now officially in the "game". And what better person to assist him in this game, than me right? He has no clue what kind of ride(s) he's in for, but I can try my best to equip him with as much common sense as possible.