Bah, Humbug.

I've read that cell phones have created a new breed of overly protective college-student parent. Used to be that a kid was lucky to get occasional use of the hall phone, shared by thirty other kids, so parents might check in occasionally. Otherwise, hey, you'd see them at Thanksgiving.

Then kids were likely to share an in-the-dorm-room phone with the roommate, which made it easier to call, but it still cost money to call long-distance and, of course, you wouldn't want to call at an odd hour and wake up the roomate. So parents wouldn't call to check in late at night even if they knew their kid had some sort of late-night activity. And you certainly wouldn't call when they were supposed to be walking around campus going to class.

Now, everyone has cell phones. And it's easy to get free long-distance from one of your family cell phones to another. So, parents can check in on their newly liberated kids every single day, if they are so inclined. It makes it awfully tempting.

I think it's more tempting when the kid is going to school locally (in our case, that means a ten-minute drive from our house--five minutes in light traffic). Because we get together with our freshman college student now and then, we know her schedule. I drop off her laundry. She borrows our car if she has to work late. I know she doesn't like to call campus security to walk her to her room from the parking lot, so I worry if I know she's out at night.

On a couple of occasions I've had her call me and talk to me on her cell phone as she walked from her car to her dorm after dark. That way, if I hear screaming, I can fling the phone down, grab my husband's phone, and call 911, directing them to her exact location ("She's about halfway between Parking Lot A and Cumberland dorm, officer").

It's insane. Utterly insane. But after eighteen years of not being able to sleep until this child is home safe, I can't give it up that easily.

Tonight, she was supposed to call my phone and let me know when she got back to her dorm--not because I was checking up, no no, just because I wanted to know what lot the car was in so we could pick it up tomorrow. She never called.

So I called and left a message telling her to call me when she got in, no matter how late, because otherwise I'd assume she had been abducted. Or, she should at least have the abductors call and let me know she was okay and would get to sleep early after a nice healthy dinner.

She never called. So at 11:00 p.m., there I am, wanting to sleep, knowing that she's an adult now and the chances are 99.9% that she was just busy with her friends or her activities and either forgot the whole thing, didn't check her messages, or didn't want to risk waking me up by calling. But still.

So I can't sleep, and I'm on the computer doing useless stuff. Until Fred (as in Flintstone--my husband's blog alias) comes out of the bathroom and I mention to him (oh so casually) that Tillie didn't call.

"Oh, yeah, she called," he said. "Hour or so ago. She called my phone."

Grrr.