I just called to say...well, not much of anything.

Sixteen-year-old Elsa would think this was a ridiculous statement: My parents may have been too lenient on me. Well, at least when it came to the phone.

I started talking on the phone as a hobby in the first grade. That’s right, six years old! There are photos of me sitting on the kitchen counter, chatting to a classmate. What did we talk about? Our cut and paste assignment for the day? Who had the snottiest nose in our class? Care Bears?

By sixth grade it had gone from hobby to obsession. I would spend hours on the phone and by this time we had three-way-calling so I could talk to multiple people at once. Hold on. I didn’t mean WE had three-way-calling. We probably still had a rotary phone. But some of my friends had it and we would play this game:

I would be talking to my friend Kathy and she would say, “I think Judy is mad me.” So we’d call Judy on three-way but not tell her that Kathy was on the phone.

Me: Hey, Judy. What’s up?
Judy: Nothing.
Me: Don’t you just hate Kathy?
Judy: Well, she can be a little bit annoying.
Kathy: Ha! I’m on the phone, Judy!!

Laughter, giggles, screams of horror would ensue. Oh, the fun of female friendships.

In junior high I would get home from school and I guess do homework and then it was talk talk talk until I had to go to bed. Then the next morning, while I was getting ready for school—now this is just sick—I would talk on the phone to my friend Amber.

My parents often asked, “What could you possibly be talking about?”

Well, I’ll tell you:

During those morning phone calls with Amber we would play music for each other. So each day it was someone’s turn to pick a song. I remember a lot of MC Hammer. Maybe a little Vanilla Ice.

Natch there was a lot of chatter about boys.

And this is the most pathetic and a true testament to why my parents were too lenient with me in the phone department:

My friend Jaime and I had this phone game we would play with the phone book. Now this is seriously lame: I would look through the Friendswood phone book and pick a name. I’d tell it to her over the phone and she would look in her phone book for it.

That’s it. That’s the game.

We called it Wickskewicz because that was the weirdest name we found. We spent hours playing Wickskewicz. Looking back, it’s amazing that we got into college.

And after years of constant begging, my parents even gave in and bought me a phone for my room (but not my own line, although I had a pretty strong case). The phone was in the shape of a heart and my dad said it looked like it belonged in a seedy Vegas motel. That’s what I loved about it!

Now Frank says I talk on the phone too much. And who am I talking to? Well, sixteen-year-old Elsa wouldn’t believe this either but it’s usually to my mom. Yep, that lady loves a good game of Wickskewicz.