As I walked into my home office this morning at 6:30, my cellphone screen alerted me to a text message, which read: "Cops came everythings fine sorry if I worried you", time stamped at 1:35 am.
My curiosity peaked, with a sense of relief over an unknown crisis nevertheless thankfully averted, and for that matter, entirely missed, I checked the previous message, which read: "OMG dad, [roommate] in my room someones trying to get into our house [roommate's] calling 911", time stamped just 21 terrifying minutes earlier, at 1:14 am. It must have seemed like hours. (Too many episodes of Dragnet compel me to excise the name of the roommate to protect the innocent.)
I am in the Pacific time zone, but these text messages were frantically sent from the Mountain time zone, as my daughter is a Junior at University of Colorado in Boulder. This whole drama occurred while I slept peacefully, unaware of the attempted B&E in progress. No suspect was apprehended, as a friend had simply left her purse and cellphone at the house and didn't want to bother anyone by ringing the doorbell (and she couldn't text her friend to let her in.)
American teenagers sent and received an average of 2,272 text messages per month in the fourth quarter of 2008, according to the Nielsen Company — almost 80 messages a day, more than double the average of a year earlier, according to a recent New York Times story. And that's an average.
I'm glad my daughter texted me (rather than calling) at that hour. She surely felt that I was by her side during this crisis, and that's what a father's for, after all. She texts a lot, but she also calls. For all of this, and that the suspicious person turned out to be a friend, I am thankful.
