The Boy Who Glued Himself To His Phone

Help him, Obi Wan . . . .

My dog Bodhi and I are walking when I spot him.

The Boy Who Glued Himself To His Phone lives around here. He plays basketball on our neighborhood court. He’s about 15 and must be 6’5”. He should camp in the low post and shoot uncontested layups, but instead, he wants to be the next Steph Curry. He jacks up more three-pointers than my mechanic Stan does cars, and Stan is always busy and very good. This Boy is terrible. He sends up one shot after another while his teammates think WTF man, we’re playing five-on-five in the park, not making videos for college scouts. He is remarkably noticeable.

On this day, The Boy is standing in the middle of the sidewalk 20 feet from us. He’s looking straight down at his phone, of course. 

I’ll get back to him. 

Aspiring doctors should waste no time specializing in neurosurgery and spine and neck pain. When paleontologists examine early 21st-century remains, they will find a species quite distinct from humans, with necks lurching forward and twisted spines. Unable to think of a scientific name for this horror, scientists will refer to this stage of human evolution as Gen Z. I mean let’s be serious – if an extinction event were to occur tomorrow, most first-world fossils would indicate surprisingly substandard nutrition, compressed vertebrae, and have an electronic device in hand. 

During our early morning walks during the school year, we pass high school students waiting for the bus. I counted 22 once. Of those, 18 were staring at their phones. No banter, no exchange of sports scores, no shared angst about Mrs. Bell’s 5th-period math test, no talk of homecoming. Nothing. And the other four? Still as statues, also in their own worlds. 

When I rode the bus in high school, it was the best part of the day. I went to a magnet school, so we had a one-hour commute each way. The bus was raucous. Some of my best memories from those years occurred on our big yellow caboose. We were all good kids creative enough to never run out of shenanigans. Given the length of our commute, the County mercifully suspended its rule against having a boom box. As the years passed, so did our music. The one consistent presence across four years was Metallica, which suited me fine. Run DMC also got a lot of play, and we learned their lyrics by heart. Genesis popped up here and there, and Michael Jackson was a regular guest. The music was always loud, and trust me, we pushed the limits of our driver’s patience. On quieter days, I faced forward and tried to pretend I cared about the Geoscience textbook I stared into. My God, I hated that class. Don’t get me started. But those days were few and far between. The bus rocked, a real-life making of whatever we wanted it to be.

Back to The Boy.

Even from 20 feet, I can see that he’s on the planet Hoth at the moment, riding his Tauntaun, a two-legged beast suited for riding, in a blizzard. For you readers who inexplicably aren’t into Star Wars, Hoth is the ice planet where Luke Skywalker goes to help the rebels at the start of The Empire Strikes Back. He nearly freezes to death, but the great Jedi Knight Obi-Wan Kenobi appears as a Force Ghost and tells him he needs to go find Jedi Master Yoda in the Dagobah System (think: solar system or galaxy), which makes the Amazon jungle look like Manhattan. Han Solo then saves him by slicing open his own Tauntan and stuffing Luke into its warm guts for the night. George Lucas had to think of something.

I can tell you one thing for sure. The Boy is on planet Hoth right now, and no one is coming to his rescue.

When we’re a bit closer, Bodhi and I stop. I want to know how long it will take for The Boy to realize there is a real world around him. Minutes pass. No joke. I’m no longer worried about Luke Skywalker. This Boy is going to freeze to death and it’s only October. Help him, Obi-Wan. 

I ask politely if we can pass.

“When I’m ready,” he says.

I’m sorry, what? When you’re ready? I think. There’s no way he just said that. 

He confuses my internal head-scratching for a statement and responds again 

“When I’m ready.”

Please, Lord, help me bite my tongue so I say nothing else.  None escape my lips.

But what I want to say is something like this.

“Who raised you? Oh, your parents? Well they won’t be hard to find, and then I’m going to get some real nice flowers and go see your mom, and when she hears this scoop, shit’s going to get really real really fast. I mean, kid, my momma would have thanked any adult who had whooped me for her and then had me by the scruff of the neck for days. “When I’m ready,” you say? Instead of three-pointers, how about getting “ready” to run wind sprints on the basketball court for the next 14 hours? Ready to take your Calculus test ten time times over – on ten consecutive days. Confiscate-your-phone-until-you-start-withdrawing-Social-Security ready.”

But I don’t say any of those things. 

Instead, I just stare at him – he has already looked away – and ask whether he’s serious.

He doesn’t say a word. He’s already back on Hoth.

Then it hits me. Like the bus stop, The Boy has spent his young life getting ready to do precisely this – to stare into nothing.

One day I’ll write about this, I think.

I can’t teach The Boy, at least not today, nor am I his parent.

Bodhi and I go another way. 

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