Can you hear me now? No, you've made me deaf.

I've come to realize that being the baby of the family and being the last to go to college is really annoying because I think for my parents it's harder for them to see me leave the nest rather than see my older sister leave. I guess I'm not very considerate of them but I try and I try to call them every weekend but I honestly hate talking on the phone and they really don't make it easier.

It's like they assume that if I don't call for every week, I've been murdered or abducted. Really? They've known me for 19 years, you'd think they know my habits by now. I'm just not a phone talker. What's even worse? For some reason they love to both talk on the phone, my hate of the day: When my parents simultaneously talk on the phone.

My understanding of a telephone is pretty much the same as a very long distance walkie talkie, made for one person to contact another. When I call a person I plan to talk to one person not a multitude. When I call my parents I expect to talk to dad and then mom. Or more realistically mom first, dad second, then mom again because she has more nagging she forgot to do.

Yet, my parents insist on having one person talk on the phone and the other yell across the room so that I can hear them while the other one is still speaking into the receiver. Seriously? We might as well just use speaker phone and host conference calls, too bad my parents don't even understand the concepts of speaker phone. The difficulties of having parents who are technologically handicapped. I still have yet to train my dad in the ways of the cable box and remote... Oh well, I'm just glad he got the hang of the DVD player. Regardless, I guess I'll just have to deal with the yelling over each other and learn to hold my phone 6 inches away from my ear so my ear drum doesn't burst.