Steve Wozniak by Fallon Cringely

Update – Audio problem solved (I hope). Just click on the play button at the bottom of the text.  Sorry.

I have three sons, Channing, Cole, and Fallon, who as of this week are 13, 11, and 9, respectively. They are all bright boys, full of energy, and completely different from each other. You can see this even in their approach to voicemail.

Each kid goes to a different school and since this mountain we live on has never seen a school bus that means one of us (usually Mama) drives to three schools, dropping a kid at each. To coordinate all this, we thought it was important for every kid to have a phone — all Samsung Galaxy S5’s. Yes, I have Android children.

Cole (11) was the first to set up his voicemail before the other two even knew they had voicemail. No surprise in this: Cole is a command line guy and understanding how systems function is very important to him. Interestingly, though, his somewhat alien approach to his voicemail greeting was to tell everyone to call back in 30 minutes! I’d never heard that one before. And no, Cole doesn’t check his phone twice an hour. Often he doesn’t even know where he left it.

Channing (13) has yet to set up his voicemail. I don’t think he cares. Channing’s communication, like those of his middle school friends, is dominated by Instagram and Snapchat. We take away his phone at night because 13 year-old girls are texting him at midnight. Channing doesn’t really watch television, either, only YouTube. If your Dad makes TV shows this is a disturbing trend.

Fallon (9) is Master of the Universe — after all, he claims to live in Fallontopia. Fallon learns by watching and misses nothing.  He will sit quietly for up to 40 hours watching his brothers play a new video game before he takes the controller for the first time. But when he takes the controller Fallon always wins. Fallon’s all about style, which he calls swag. So we weren’t at all surprised at his voicemail greeting, which you can listen to here.

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