"Sweet Home Alabama, Sydney shouldn't be listening to you"

For reasons that will never be fully understood, New York State issued Sydney Mosiman a driver's license. For reasons that are more-than-obviously apparent to anyone who considers road safety a chief concern, Brad and I immediately implemented some rules for the protection of our child, other motor vehiclists, and anyone within a 250 foot radius of the road.  Rule number one was that Sydney has to text us upon arrival AND departure. Rule number two: no radio. Now, just between you and me (and the three other people who read this blog out of sympathy), I am FULLY aware that the minute Sweet Baby left the drive-way and was out of sight of the house, the radio was quickly turned on. But as long as she was smart enough to have it off each time Ranger was parked in the drive-way, I could a) fool myself into believing that she respected and abided by my rules and b) know that having her conscientiously shield her clandestine radio antics from me, she also had to acknowledge that her parents consider the radio a distraction and she might, just might be a bit more careful. Hey, face it. If I can't get Sydney to ride around in a magical bubble, I might as well hop aboard.

So there we were, Brad and I, deep in meditative prayer as Sydney made the perilous 14-mile journey to work. Suddenly, Brad's cell phone rang. He listened for a moment, then, with an alarmed glance at me, set the device to "speaker." "Sweet Home, Alabama...where skies are so blue..." I admit I was baffled. Was this some sort of satellite interference? Did we cross lines with someone else's phone? Can a cell phone actually "cross lines?" Now alarmed at my level of ignorance, Brad mercilessly pulled my head out of the sand. "That's your daughter. She butt-dialed me." We marveled as Sydney finished accompanying Leonard Skynyrd, wondering why she had ever quit chorus. She then began the process of shuffling though thousands of other stations to find another song to her liking. Meanwhile, I was busy sending her a complimentary text, informing her of some significant changes that were being made to her summer schedule plans.

Some time later, Savannah arrived home to find her father and I in an agitated state with no discernible explanation. Sniffing around for clues, she eventually stumbled on my carefully crafted cell phone message to her sister and enjoyed a soul-cleansing laugh before pausing to ponder HOW Brad and I came upon our top-secret information. The interrogation immediately began. Under this extremely annoying pressure, I eventually caved; confessing that Daddy had installed security cameras in all of the family vehicles. Doubtful at first, my college daughter continued to grill me. I admitted my lack of knowledge regarding the schematics of the process but said that I was on board, like my nation, occasionally willing to forego the luxury of privacy in the name of safety. Savannah then turned her now-angry attention to her father. She threw out some technical jargon which her father easily lobbed back as he explained how the security system also routed through the fm system of the radios. "Get it out NOW!" she shouted, immediately regressing to age two. Brad and I high-fived as Savannah stomped out of the room. What this little anecdote demonstrates is that, when consumed by negative emotions, re-focus your energy on more productive activities, like messing with Savannah's head.  As for Sydney, she was listening to the wrong song. We are currently working on a parody of "Video Killed the Radio Star." The working title is "The Radio Killed Any Chance of Sydney Having a Social Life."