I want to live! LIVE!

So Saturday I took a much needed break from all of the writing and PR and general Crewel-stuff I've been obsessing over lately, and spent the day with my family.  This week marks a series of trips to promote Crewel with booksellers, and then before I know it will be release day (zomg, can you believe it?) followed by the Fierce Reads tour.  I decided it was best to give my attention-starved kids some quality time.  We went to the local fall festival, saw friends, and bounced in the bounce house.  We came home and lounged.  I read a book Macmillan sent me for the Great MCPG Banned Books Drop this week (Annie on My Mind, which I had never read before).  And then it was time to drop off the kiddos to spend some time with my neglected husband.

We opted to go to the local amusement park for their Halloween Haunt after he promised not to push me at the cannibalistic clowns like the last time we went.  He was a good sport and let me cling to him all through Asylum Island, ensuring I didn't see a thing, although he did equate it to dragging an 80lb sack of sand behind him.  80 lbs is generous.

Most of the lines were too long for people with season passes to endure, so we only rode a few rides.  And wouldn't you know it I encountered a first.  About 20 seconds into the tornado ride, it came screeching to a halt.  And I thought hey, at least, we're on the down side right now.  But then it leveled out and we waited.

Soon a frustrated employee walked up to a seat three down from ours.

He'd stopped the ride because someone had pulled out a cell phone.

Yes, that's right.  Someone was so bored with having fun, they had to text.

My husband instantly slipped into dad mode and started in on what would happen if the phone slipped from her hand during the ride and hit someone, but I just was sad.

I am a self-described networking junkie.  I'm constantly on twitter or facebook or  reading emails, but let me tell you given a choice between being whirled through the air and having my stomach drop out and laughing, laughing, laughing for 30 seconds or sending a tweet, I'm choosing the ride, y'all.

As we exited, we heard the teen operator mutter some really colorful words about having to stop the ride AGAIN.  This apparently happens all the time.

I don't want to sound like an old lady shaking her cane at the young'ens.  But I'm sort of glad I was in high school before cell phones hit.  Yes, I was dependent on pay phones or the one friend whose mom let her take her cell phone to use for a ride home to call my parents, but I didn't spend all my time with other people plugged in.  At the amusement park, people who didn't have phones out in line were in the minority. No one was talking to each other.  Except for one group of teens who took about 300 pictures of themselves in line until I strongly considered bashing their phones into the sidewalk.

I love all the ways that the internet connects me to people across the world, but sometimes I just want to enjoy the person next to me.  I think its one of the biggest chances I'll face as a parent, raising kids in the technology era.

Also I'm kinda hoping that this is the twist behind the new show Revolution.  Someone got really sick of having their amusement park rides stopped midway.