Mother’s Day is a tough holiday. While it’s a day to celebrate Mom, my heart aches as there are so many people who’ve lost their mother to illness or an accident.

Then there are those whose mothers are alive but were never invested in their child’s life. The adult child has no reason to shower flowers and bathrobes on a woman who never seemed to care.

There’s the moms who weren’t born into that role but gladly took on mom responsibilities and love their children with all their heart.

And let’s not forget dads who step in for moms due to circumstances beyond their control. They learn to braid hair, console a broken heart and find out the best place to get a mani or pedi when their girl’s having a tough week.

Throughout the ages, women have struggled to be the perfect mom. Many moms of the 1970s and 1980s  tried to balance the home front and an out-of-the-house job. Most of the time, we succeeded, but there were quite a few fast-food dinners at the ball park  we probably regret.

Moms of the 1990s bought into the theory that we could have a pre-dawn exercise routine, hold down high-powered jobs, enroll 2.5 children on every soccer, baseball, softball, yoga and swimming team within 50 miles of our house and still get our exhausted family in the minivan for a happy ride into the sunset.

Some moms of the 2000’s are trying to be like Beyonce or Princess Kate, both of whom seemed to drop the baby weight like we drop a Hot Pocket snagged out of the microwave.

We still haven’t grasped the reality that the best moms have their own style. They rear their offspring with a firm hand and a loving heart. They’re always a mom, whether they’re wearing designer jeans, sweat pants, on crutches, in a wheelchair or washing your dirty laundry.

Moms never eat the last piece of pizza or the last scoop of vanilla ice cream. In fact, the word “last” figures high in their vocabulary – they’re the last ones to turn off the lights in a child’s bedroom and the last one out of the kitchen at night.

So what do moms want on Mother’s Day? To hear their child’s voice, whether they’re 5 or 60 years old. Remember, this is the voice that called out to them in the middle of the night and yelled in triumph after catching a lizard in the flower bed.

This is the voice that telephoned for rides after they missed the bus, asked a thousand times if they had any clean underwear and, at least a million times, asked if there was anything to eat.
There are moms who would give anything to hear their child’s voice just one more time, and every person’s heart breaks for that parent.

And there are “those voices,” the whiney ones that swore their lives were ruined because we were too strict or wouldn’t let them wear makeup or short skirts.

Kids, I’ll tell you a secret. Moms will tell you they don’t remember that voice. They only remember the way your voice sounded when they tucked you in at night and you whispered “Sleep next to me, mommy, so I feel safe.”

On this Mother’s Day, remember it’s not the expensive gifts, lunch at a fancy restaurant or a new bathrobe that’ll make your mother happy. It’s your voice she wants to hear.

So call, just to say you love her, and remind her that, at this point in time, you’ll be the one to keep her safe.

This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.

The expression “blue-collar” worker doesn’t resonate like it used to, but I understand the term because I grew up in a blue-collar town.
Our parents didn’t drive new cars nor did we. We were expected to use our manners and to respect the older people in our community.
The worst offense we could commit was having a teacher call home to report we’d misbehaved in class. Not only did you get in trouble from your mom, but your grandparents, aunts and cousins joined in because you brought shame to the family. Let’s not even talk about when dad got home.
It didn’t matter your race, creed, color or religion – parents expected their children to behave and the kids who didn’t listen were the minority. They did, however, keep us entertained while we finished our work.
Kids today are still entertained by the class clown, but instead of getting in trouble with the school and then at home, troublemakers get a slap on the wrist and society makes excuses for their poor behavior.
And that’s when the trouble really starts.
When out-of-control students are allowed to have their way, good educators fear for their safety and decide to leave before they lose their desire to teach.
Eventually mediocre ones take their place, and students who want to learn are forced to do so on their own amidst disrespect, chaos and boorish behavior. Worse than that, they are left behind because no one’s there to encourage them in the classroom.

There are hundreds of theories about how to change behavior, but one theory is absolutely true — the reality of dollars and cents.  
If you run off good educators, you’re stuck with ones who are in the classroom for the paycheck. Students only learn the basics, if that, and graduate from high school at the bottom of the educational ladder.

They try and get a good job but they can’t because they don’t have the basics. Remember, the bullies ran the good teachers off. These students are left to scrape by all their lives at jobs they hate because they didn’t get an education during their formative years.

On the flip side, at schools where parents teach their children to respect teachers, respect each other and respect themselves, learning takes place. The household paycheck has nothing to do with the ability to learn respect.
Good manners are the responsibility of the parent to teach the child and then hold that child accountable. It should not be the school’s job to teach your child to sit in their seat, stop talking and learn something.
Mom and dad, that’s your job.

Parents, put down the remote and the cell phone. Teach your children at every opportunity. Have conversations at the dinner table, even if that’s over take-out burgers. Teach them to wait their turn, to use words instead of fists and to have a thirst for knowledge.  

Teach them to respect their elders and, if they don’t like the rules, learn effective ways to change them. Until then, respect the law, respect society and respect themselves enough to know they need a good education to get ahead in life. The class clowns and thugs are robbing them of the most important intangible they’ll ever have access to – an education.

No matter the color of your skin, your home address or your ethnicity, having high expectations and constantly reaching for them is what separates the educated from the ignorant.
If you want the best chance for your child to be successful, tell them that the only sure-fire way out of a situation they don’t like is an education.
And that education begins at home.
 This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.

 I’ve had a variety of jobs, starting with babysitting when I was 12 years old. The eldest of seven children, I had a lot of on-the-job experience and landed an after-school job watching two boys when I was in high school.  

On the weekends, I worked at a movie theater. I’ve filled more bags of popcorn than I can count and sold hundreds of boxes of Jujubees. I was just a face behind the counter, not worth much respect, but the job helped me put gas in my car and pay my insurance.

I worked as a temporary office worker for Kelly Girl to pay my college tuition. Because we were temps, nobody in the office bothered to learn our names or invite us to lunch. Up to that point, jobs were a way to earn money, nothing more.

Then started the most satisfying and lowest-paying job of my life – mom. I went through all the stereotypical situations stay-at-home moms experience and learn to surface laugh about. That included having nothing to talk about at parties except the plot lines on “Sesame Street.”

When the boys were in school all day, I started working part-time at this newspaper. The arrangement was a great fit because I could be home with my sons but contribute to society as a feature writer. I was fortunate to interview and write about the best people in our county.
Somewhere along the way, though, reporters got blamed for biased reporting and the profession I came to love was vilified because of a few bad apples.

I went back to college to earn my bachelor’s degree and a teaching position opened up. For eight years now, I’ve been teaching high school journalism, passing on my love and passion for not only writing but for showing young journalists they can change the world in a positive way with their words.

And once again, the profession I’ve chosen has come under attack. People want to blame all of society’s woes on teachers.
There’s a nasty and misleading bill before the Texas House of Representatives, SB893, that not only slashes teacher salaries but will quickly drive out dedicated teachers who believe in education but realistically have to feed their families.

I’ve called and written my representatives opposing this bill, and I urge others to do the same. And not just in support of educators but for any bill that’s written for special interest groups and not society as a whole.
I’m tired of being the scapegoat in my chosen profession. Instead of giving up, I’m fighting for respect, and it’s time to give credit where credit is due. Moms, your job is the basic building block of society, whether you’re working outside the home or in the home. Don’t let anyone belittle what you do. 
Teachers, your job is to educate and enlighten. Fight for what’s right and show your students that when good people sit back and do nothing, the bad guys win.
And reporters – your job is to keep watch and report. We’re counting on you to make sure justice prevails and to keep digging until you find the truth.

No matter what career path you follow, make your voice heard when you see legislation going up for a vote that’s on the side of special interest groups, not the common guy.
Standing up publicly for what you believe is an honorable way to live. And, if I pay attention to what my parents, my teachers and my editors told me, it’s the only way.

 This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.   

  One of the downsides of living in the country and working in the city is the commute time. I’m grateful I don’t have to drive through rush-hour traffic or battle the “spaghetti bowls” of Houston. But an hour commute each day does have its perks.

The main advantage is I talk with my mom every day on my way home. She always wants to know how I’m doing and then there’s my standard questions about her blood sugar and what she did that day.

Her days are filled with more activities than someone a third her age. She volunteers at the local hospital’s gift shop, she helps count the money at church and she makes refreshments for the people in my brother’s religious education class.

There’s lots of laughter in our conversations and most of the time, our talks center around the present.

Today’s conversation started with talking about our getting a bigger vehicle so we can transport our grandchildren from their new house back to ours for weekend visits. That led into when our family moved from New York to Louisiana.

I was going into the seventh grade, and the story I was told was that my dad wanted us in his home state, Louisiana, because he couldn’t stand shoveling snow any more.

We had to sell our toys, our furniture and most of our belongings and move into a house a third the size of what we had up north. Worse, we were moving away from my mom’s entire family.
Eventually we made friends, but those first few years weren’t easy. My mom made sure we all attended Mass and ate Sunday dinner together and she established holiday traditions we’ve carried over in our own extended families.

What I didn’t realize until our conversation today was that my Dad left because he’d failed at every business opportunity he had up there and was desperate. That left my Mom with six children to take care of, so she went back to school and got a job.

She wasn’t sure he would come back, but when my Dad returned with a U-Haul, Mom made the decision to leave her parents and move to Louisiana with a broken husband and six young children.
I asked how she came to that decision and she said the answer was simple – they’d promised each other in church to raise a family together, and they weren’t going to break that promise until they’d given their life another chance. And just as important, she wanted her family together.

So she put what she thought her children needed in place of what was easy for her. She doesn’t judge single mothers – she stood by me 35 years ago when I found myself in that situation – and she’s supportive of all the decisions her children have made because she wants us to be happy.
Not a conversation goes by where my Mom isn’t telling me how much she loves all of us and how wonderful and special she believes all of her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren to be.

“Your children are everything,” she said. “They are your precious gift from God and they come first.”

“Even when they’re all grown up?” I said.

“Forever,” she replied.

I held the phone away so she wouldn’t hear the catch in my voice.

“Mom, if I haven’t told you lately, you’re my hero,” I finally said.

“No,” she replied. “I’m just your mom.”

In my book, that’s a hero.

This article was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.

Whenever I’m online, I always grow impatient for those “skip this ad in 4 seconds” prompt to activate. I know those commercials are the reason I’m seeing videos for free, but I still tap my finger on the mouse until they disappear.

Last week, I was looking for a dropped paper clip and didn’t get a chance to escape the mandatory ad, and I’m glad I watched. The four-minute video was from Valspar and is entitled “Color for the Colorblind.”

Together with EnChroma, Valspar developed glasses for color-blind people. They’ve never seen the subtle hues of a rainbow, the differences in Crayola colors nor have they seen the vibrant yellows and oranges of a sunset.

The video is amazing. People describe how the world looks gray without the glasses and then how they’re almost speechless when seeing colors for the first time.

They knew they weren’t seeing all the colors, but they grew accustomed to the world as they were seeing it.
All of us compensate in some way – we squint to bring the newspaper into focus, order glasses to correct the issue or give up trying to read the small print. If we can’t see it, then the problem must not be there.

Whether or not these glasses, or others like them, worked wasn’t what I was thinking about after the video. What stayed with me, besides watching people see color for the first time, was one line from a physicist – “We don’t all see the world the same way.”

He’s absolutely right. We can look at a crowded room and either see a place where we’d love to hang out or a room they’d have to drag us in kicking and screaming.

We can see the world as a vicious, terrifying place, filled with shadows and violence, or see a world of possibilities and beauty, even when that beauty isn’t textbook castles and fluffy clouds. Our point of view depends on the lens with which we choose to see the world.

After watching the video, I read quite a few articles about glasses for the color blind. For some, the glasses didn’t work, including one disappointed reporter who was bitter and angry.
There’s a scientific reason Valspar posted as to why the glasses don’t work for all colorblind people, but for that writer, new glasses didn’t change his outlook. In fact, not seeing what the glasses delivered to others made him bitterly angry.

I can’t say I blame him, but I don’t think he stopped to think that whenever we decide to look at the world in a different light, we’ve already changed our perspective no matter what our eyes tell us.
Someone with worn clothes usually gets judged as untrustworthy. But most of us have seen someone we pre-judged as beneath us carry the groceries for an elderly person or pick up litter from the street.

We’ve all thought well of the person in the expensive suit and thought that person had it made. And we’ve all experienced seeing that same guy walk right past a needy person, cut us off in traffic and snag our place in the grocery line because he thinks he’s entitled.

But when we decide to put on different lenses, we see people and the world in a different light, not through a pre-conceived filter of how we think life is supposed to be.

I wish a manufacturer could make glasses to allow us to see different points of view without judgment. Maybe then we’d really see the colors in the world.
This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.

I looked at the mail and my heart sank.

A jury summons addressed to me.

My first words were not “oh joy.” 
Every time I looked at that letter, I’d grit my teeth in frustration.

I was to report to the Fort Bend County Courthouse at 12:30 p.m.; and as I maneuvered down Golfview, which is a construction nightmare, I became even more aggravated.

I pulled into the parking lot of the Fort Bend County Justice Center, though, and was quite impressed. The graceful building fronts a spacious parking area and the entrance is grand and modern.

The line to get into the building never slowed, thanks to deputies who politely moved us along to the jury waiting area.
I expected to wait in a cramped room with metal folding chairs, but I was pleasantly surprised to find a comfortable waiting area with plenty of padded chairs.
Playing on a big television screen was a video of what to expect from jury duty. The film featured judges and lawyers who explained most of the questions jurors might have. The room filled quickly, and soon the judge came in and asked anyone who couldn’t serve to see him.
After the last person had their excuse signed, the judge thanked everyone for their time. An easy-going clerk explained the afternoon’s process to us, traded a few jokes and made the waiting time pass quickly.

Soon a deputy began calling names with instructions to line up in the waiting area. I think everyone in that room was silently praying “please don’t call my name.”

Then my name was called, so I sighed, picked up my purse and got in the line. When we entered a courtroom, five well-dressed people were silently facing us – two prosecutors and two attorneys flanking a nervous young man.

No one spoke a word as we took our seats and listened to another set of instructions from the judge. As the attorneys visually sized us up, I glanced at the people sitting around me. They came from all walks of life – young, old, middle-aged – and all had a similar look of trepidation on their faces.

The prosecutors went first, showing us a PowerPoint to explain voire dire, the process by which jurors are selected. People were encouraged to speak freely to questions I’m sure had been carefully chosen.

Then the defense team took the podium, asking if we could honestly say the person at the defendant’s table was innocent until proven guilty. I looked at that man and wondered what he was thinking.
He was putting his fate in the hands of six people he’d never met before, and I realized it was true what the first judge had told us – jury duty is not a chore to be taken lightly.
A juror decides whether or not a person goes to jail that day or walks out into the sunshine a free man or woman. At that moment, I realized the seriousness of what we’d been asked to do.
Later that afternoon while heading back to my car, I noticed a walking path to a covered swing. I wondered if jurors who are charged with determining the fate of defendants sit there and mentally prepare for what they’re being asked to do.

After what I’d heard that afternoon, I believed the six strangers I saw in that courtroom would come together as a team and justice would be served.

 A word to the wise:  Do not wear a T-shirt, jeans or a warm-up suit to serve as a juror. Give the court the honor and respect she, and the people seeking justice in her courtroom, deserves.  

 

This article was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.

Nothing gets our family dog more excited than seeing us take the leash from the top shelf of the front closet. She knows that means it’s walking time and she’s going out.
Most of the time, walking Channell is my husband’s job because he likes walking, he’s in better shape than I am and he’ll take the dog out when the weather’s hot, cold, rainy or mild.

  When the hubby’s not home, walking the dog falls to me, and I’ll admit to being a poor substitute because I won’t go if it’s too hot, too cold or raining.
Also our walks aren’t nearly as long as when Channell goes with the man, but our dog seems just as excited to head out with me as she does with him.

  Channell, to her credit, does not call me a slacker.

  The adventure starts with trying to clip her leash to her collar. Even though Channell knows the drill, it’s sometimes hard to attach the leash because she’s so excited.
But she’s a smart dog, so when I stamp my foot and say “we’re not going,” she lays down and lets me hook her up.

  Heading out the door, I know to hang on to the leash with all my might. She’s revved up like a tornado when she sees the road stretching out before her. But first, we have to stop at the end of the driveway so she can smell the ground around the mailbox.

  I know she’s checking out other dogs who’ve marked their territory, so I let her take her time. Then we’re off down the street. The next-door dog fiercely guards his territory and barks ferociously the whole time we’re in front of his house.

  Channell ignores him and keeps her eyes out for her sworn mortal enemy, the squirrel. Because there’s pecan trees along our route, she knows there will be aggravated squirrels chattering at us from the safety of the high branches.

  After we pass those pecan trees, I start to relax and enjoy the nightly stroll.
Unless I think I hear a bat overhead, the mosquitoes are biting or it’s cold. Then all I do is complain to Channell about how much I hate the cold, how much I hate bugs and if a bat gets in my hair, I’m dropping the leash and running for cover.

  Channell does not tell me to stop being a baby.

  What she does quite well, though, is listen. A few months ago, a good friend suggested I try positive self talk. He said that instead of criticizing myself, I should tell myself nice things. I should take advantage of walking the dog to practice positive self talk, he advised.

  So one night, I tried it out with Channell as my sounding board.

  She listened to my entire soliloquy without interrupting, unless you count stopping to sniff an ant pile or marking a lone daisy interrupting.
On our walks, Channell’s helped me through a variety of problems and issues. Sometimes her advice is to nod her head in agreement, other times to ignore my really mean remarks, and sometimes to simply listen.

  At the end of the walk, Channell knows which one’s our driveway and she always turns in, leading me home. She walks a lot slower back up the driveway than she did 20 minutes earlier, but her tail is wagging. I know I feel better for having gotten what’s bothering me off my chest.

  Channell does not tell me “I told you so.”

 This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.

We were at a restaurant recently, and there were two families having dinner, as different as night and day.

At one, the mother was yakking away on her cell phone. The teenage boy and girl were totally immersed in their cell phones. The father was eating in silence, the lonely look on his face telling a sad story.

At another table, a mom and dad were there with three teenagers, and they were engaged in a lively conversation the whole time. There was laughing and talking and it seemed obvious they were comfortable and happy sharing food and conversation.

I thought about dinner time when I was their age and the one unbreakable rule – you did not miss Sunday dinner with the family. All nine of us went to Sunday morning Mass together, and then came home for roast, rice, mashed potatoes, salad, rolls and gravy.

Mom insisted we use a tablecloth and the best dinner plates. Somebody always spilled their Kool-Aid, but Mom wanted us to understand that dinners together were important, no matter how many times she had to wash that white tablecloth.

Dinner lasted a long time because we Heberts are extroverts, and we talked about all kinds of things. My dad had definite opinions about the government and how we should succeed in life.

As we got older and braver, we’d challenge his beliefs so dinners were always lively and cemented us as a family.

 

Modern Family Dinners

I recently conducted an informal survey with about 60 teenagers, asking about dinner time at their homes, and the results were sad. Most said they either ate in their rooms alone or they ate in front of the television.

For those who ate together as a family, they said dinner time was when they felt safe to talk about their day. As a family, they shared their achievements, disappointments, funny moments and the aggravating events. They said that hour was the highlight of their day.
It didn’t matter that their definition of family wasn’t what’s portrayed in “Family Circle” magazine. For some, family meant a single mom or single dad. For others, it was two parents and younger siblings who couldn’t yet join in the conversation, but they were learning by example how families connect.
Because technology runs our lives, we’re losing out that the most important people we should be communicating with are the people in our families and those whom we break bread or share take-out fried chicken.
So often, I see people in restaurants on their cell phones, ignoring the people at their table. Worse is when everybody’s on their cells, mistakenly believing that what’s out there in cyberspace is more important than the people at the table they chose to spend time with.
The solution’s simple:  put away the cell phones. If you’re paranoid about missing an emergency call, assign different ring tones to your loved ones, put the cell in your pocket and only answer a call from them.
Stop texting during dinner and insist your children follow the same rule. If you’re that addicted to your cell phone and can’t break away from technology for 20 minutes, you’ve got more troubles than we can address here.
Start talking face to face. If your teenager has his or her face glued to that cell phone, they are not learning the fine art of face-to-face conversation. It’s your job to teach them.

Insist your family sit down for meals together and form bonds that will last a lifetime. They do that when they share the blessing, pass the bread and find acceptance at the family dinner table.

 This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.

When I was 18 years old, my dad entrusted my younger brother and me with the job of driving our family home to Louisiana from New York State. We’d been visiting my grandparents, but as we were packing up the back of the covered truck, I spotted two bulging cardboard boxes by the back bumper.  

“What’s in there?” I asked.

“Rocks,” my mother said.

“We’re taking two boxes of rocks back home? For what?” I wanted to know.

“To remind me of home,” my mom said.

That made no sense to me. I didn’t understand why we had to drag 75 pounds of rocks over a thousand miles.

That is until I drove 50 miles to buy three little rocks to go in our yard.

Rocks have played a part in our family for a long time. Not just from my mother, but two of my brothers are geologists. They’re always stopping to look at rocks on the side of the road, and all rock piles are an adventure.

When our sons were young, they saw some of the rocks my brothers had collected and begged Santa for a rock polishing machine.

Santa obliged.

What Santa didn’t know was that it takes hours to polish a few rocks. He also didn’t know a rock polishing machine is louder than a jackhammer pounding away on concrete.

We ended up putting the rock polishing machine in the garage but I could hear that machine clanking and banging inside the house.

But when the rocks came out of the polisher, they were stunning.

Although I’d never admit this to my mother, for the past few years, I’ve grown increasingly fascinated by rocks. Whenever we go to a park or creek, I’m always on the lookout for geodes – rocks that are bumpy and coarse on the outside.

It’s easy to walk right by a geode because they’re plain and unattractive. But when you break one open and look inside, it’s like gazing into a crystal palace of purples and silvers.

People unfamiliar with geodes are always surprised when they see the beauty inside, and I like to think that people are the same – often rough on the inside yet beautiful on the inside.

I thought about the rocks I love one afternoon when my husband and I decided to update a small, round flower bed in the back yard. I could envision a few small boulders in the center, surrounded by flowers.  How hard, I thought, could it be to find those rocks?

It was about as hard as, well, a rock.

I love to shop locally, but the nurseries here said they didn’t carry what I wanted. One nice sales person told me to look for a rock yard and I found Apex Stone near Sealy.

When I walked out the showroom’s back door, I couldn’t believe the acres of rocks, granite slabs, pebbles, stones and boulders stretching out in front of me.

I was in heaven.

I took my time marveling at all the different shapes of rocks, examining the different colors in the dozens of varieties of rocks.

Thanks to my mom and my brothers, I knew to look past the rough exterior and to instead search for veins of silver, flecks of sparkling granite and interesting color curves.

An hour later, I gave the cashier $2 for my rocks, came home and arranged them in our flower bed. The flowers I’ll plant there will add color but the real beauty, for those who know where to look, is hidden in those three simple rocks.
This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.

I overheard two mothers talking the other day. One was aggravated with her daughter’s teacher. It seems the mom had called her daughter while the girl was in class to tell her she was picking her up after school.

The teacher made the girl put the cell phone away, angry the student was answering her phone during class time. The mother was angry with the teacher for not understanding she needed to tell her daughter something right then and there.

As a teacher, I was furious.

As an observer of human behavior, I was saddened but not surprised.

Because I was at a friend’s house, I didn’t jump into the conversation. If I had, my reply would’ve been that her daughter is in school to learn, not take mom’s phone call.

I also would’ve reminded this mother that the phone call not only interrupted her daughter’s learning, the call disturbed the teacher and other students in the class.

And for what? Because this mother believed her needs outweighed the needs of everyone else.

Our society has a bad habit of thinking about ourselves before we think about others. What we want is much more important than what anyone else might want or need.

We mostly put teenagers in this category. We have a stereotype of a teenager as a self-centered boor, mindlessly texting while walking in the mall, oblivious to everything around them.

But adults are just as attached to their cell phones as the younger generation. In meetings, employees think nothing of answering text messages or checking their email while someone else is talking or presenting.

At the park, I see mothers pushing their children on the swings with one hand while the other is holding a cell phone. Their child is performing daredevil acts on the monkey bars; and because mom is so engrossed in her cell phone, she misses the whole show.

She is, however, reviewing the latest texts from her friends and her child has to deal with an adult who’s there in person but not there in mind. No more chatting with other parents in the park – the cell phone has become the new friend.

Couples in restaurants are on their phones instead of talking to each other. Worse is when everybody sits quietly at the dinner table, intent on their cell phone, and not talking with each other.

In the grocery store line, people no longer slyly scan “The National Enquirer” covers or talk to the person behind them in line. They’re too busy texting, talking on their phone or reading the latest Yahoo headlines on their cell phones.

In their quest to stay connected, they’ve forgotten the importance of human contact. People are much more fascinating to watch than anything on a cell phone and you never know what you might learn from having an actual conversation with another person, face to face.

But first, you have to put away the cell phone. Talk to somebody.

Put the cell phone away when you’re at the park. Your child will never be this age again. Savor the moments.

Turn off the phone when you’re in a meeting and give your attention to your colleague. He or she will remember the respect you showed them.

And moms, quit expecting your child to answer your phone calls and texts when they’re in class. Show them you value education.

And don’t get mad at the teacher for doing what he or she is there to do – provide your child with an education.

Teachers can do that if your self-centered wants and demands don’t get in the way.

 This column was originally published in The Fort Bend Herald.