Calling my daughter...Where R U?

I have compiled a mental list of what I consider to be “life changing” moments. So far I have three. I would have had four had the Cubs won the World Series in 2008. But since they choked, as only the Cubs know how, the list stands at three:



1) I got married

2) My first child was born

3) Aforementioned child got her first cell phone



If, for a moment, you care to debate whether number three truly changed my life, I invite you to spend a day at my house and watch my 11-year-old daughter Natalie in action. You will no doubt leave my home only after giving me a supportive pat on the back and perhaps a bottle of vodka to help me get through the rest of my life.



I can’t say I didn’t see it coming. Natalie is a sixth-grader, which means we are lengthening her leash and allowing her extra freedom. Her friends’ parents are doing the same, which explains why cell phones had become so prevalent among her peers in the past year. The car pool backseats have grown much quieter because most of her friends spend the entire ride to volleyball practice and sleepovers tapping out text messages, often to each other. Such is the case when your cell phone plan comes with UNLIMITED TEXT!!!



One by one, the girls all got phones until Natalie was convinced the only people in the world without this communication necessity was herself and a remote tribe in the Congo. She was left to peer over her friends’ shoulders or worse, use my phone to send text messages. One day I looked at my address book and names like “Lauren,” “Cheyenne,” “Ali” and “Haley” had been added.



At the beginning of the school year, we struck a deal after a lengthy discussion: keep your grades up and wait until Christmas and you will have a phone. Seeing a light at the end of the tunnel, Natalie, already an excellent student, began requesting trips to every Best Buy and Sprint store within a 50-mile radius of our home. Once inside, she pored over the phone selection the same way a gourmet chef looks at onions. Numerous phones were discarded for various reasons including “no slide out keyboard,” “not enough buttons” and “it only comes in red.” The phones all looked the same to me but I’m not eleven and therefore, have no idea what I’m talking about.



Eventually she settled on something called a “Rant” from Sprint. Oh, and she also informed us that it had to be purple. I’m not sure if purple phones get better reception but I could only imagine Alexander Graham Bell doing flip flops in his grave as he realized his history making invention was being judged based on color.



At this point, it was time for lengthy discussion number two: paying for it. We were determined to discuss this subject in detail as we have already heard horror stories from neighbors who didn’t properly explain what is and what is not included on a cell phone plan. As a result, they were greeted with thousand dollar bills for services such as “Hannah Montana’s ringtone of the day.”



We struck another deal: We buy the phone, add it to our family plan and she contributes 15 bucks a month. If she doesn’t have the money, we keep the phone for the entire month and decide whether we want to return text messages such as “WHAT R U DOIN?” HALEY. With just a slight eye roll, she agreed and then retreated to her room to ponder a future career as a baby sitter.



The Fall whizzed by. Her grades kicked butt. She made the Honor Roll. Knowing the phone would soon be hers, she went into cell phone training. By that I meant she began talking about cell phones with her friends the way an engineer talks about widgets. She boldly asked to see her friends’ phones and compare them with the Rant that she still did not have. She even sent my wife text messages from other phones, just to prove she had mastered the technology that will eventually replace verbal communication.


Finally the blessed day arrived. December 25, the birthday of our Lord and the day my daughter became cool again. Sue had decided to prolong the moment by wrapping the fully functioning Rant in eight boxes and calling the number as Natalie began unwrapping them. However, due to our cluelessness, we failed to maximize the volume level on the phone so nobody heard the ringing phone as Natalie tore through box after box. Eventually the phone made its debut, with the same amount of enthusiasm as a newborn passing through a birth canal. Within minutes Natalie was texting her friends and I was growing aware that face-to-face conversation with my daughter would no longer be a given, but a treat.

Unless her battery dies or she can’t scrape up 15 bucks.

About Greg Schwem



Greg Schwem is a corporate stand-up comedian and humorous speaker. He is president of Comedy With a Byte. View clips of Greg by visiting http://www.comedywithabyte.com/demo.htm or visiting his YouTube playlist by clicking here

The world's greatest salesman

Every year I perform my stand-up comedy routine at dozens of sales awards banquets. They’re usually held in nice resorts, include open bar at some point and are attended by the company’s top producers – the “best of the best” if you will.

The attendees carry themselves well. From the moment they stride into the resort, golf bags slung over their shoulder, they walk with an air of accomplishment. They know they are excellent salespeople. Some may even go so far as to think they are the best salespeople.

They are not. For I know the best salesperson. While we have never met, I know where to find him or her. It’s somewhere in Pennsylvania. But more on that later. First, any talk of the best sales person in the world has to include this joke:

A salesman walks into a sporting goods store to apply for a job. During the interview he tells the manager that he is the world’s best salesman.
“I can sell anything to anybody,” he says, matter-of-factly.
Unconvinced, the manager puts him on the floor immediately and then drifts over to the salesman’s area, hoping to watch the first customer exchange.
A man approaches and chats briefly with the salesman. Together they head to fishing tackle where, within minutes, the customer has purchased $500 worth of fishing poles and tackle.
The awestruck manager creeps closer, anxious to get a whiff of the conversation.
“Now that you got the fishing tackle, aren’t you going to need a boat?” the salesman asks.
The customer agrees and buys a boat on the spot.
“How about a trailer to haul that boat?” asks the salesman. Another sale right there, this time for a top of the line trailer and hitch.
“A trailer like that can only be towed by a large Winnebago,” says the salesman. Let me show you what we’ve got.
The manager is completely blown away as he sees the customer sign the paperwork for a new Winnebago.
But the salesman isn’t done. Not until he has sold the customer a piece of lakefront property where he can fish to his heart’s content.
When the customer had left, the manager came out from behind his hiding place. “I gotta tell you buddy, I was skeptical but I just watched you in action and you truly are the world’s greatest salesman. I mean, that guy just came in to buy fishing tackle and he walks out with a boat, a Winnebago and a piece of property. Unbelievable!
“You don’t know the half of it,” the salesman replies. “That guy came in looking for tampons for his wife and I said, ‘hey, as long as you aren’t doing anything this weekend, why not go fishing?’”

BA-DOOM CHING!

Okay it’s not a laugh out loud joke but it’s funny if you pound the pavement every day, hoping for the next big score that will send you on that trip to Hawaii. And maybe someday you will be as talented as the salesperson in Pennsylvania. Again, I don’t know this person’s name or whether this person is male or female. I only know that he or she sells cell phone service.

Several weeks ago I was performing for PennMed Healthcare, which manages 17 long-term care facilities in Pennsylvania. Each year the company organized a corporate “retreat,” in which the top brass go to a remote location and spend two days discussing how to make PennMed a better operation.

For reasons never quite explained to me, the group chose the St. Francis Center for Renewal, a convent located in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. It was the first show I had ever performed in a convent. Statues and paintings of Jesus were on every wall of the showroom. The Lord truly was watching me from all angles.

But that’s not all. According to Wikipedia, Bethlehem is also home to the largest concentration of Amish people in the world. Indeed, when driving around the area, it’s hard not to see billboards for Amish furniture and other wares.
So there I was at 8:30 a.m. driving a rental car and attempting to find a convent in the middle of Amish country. Upon arrival, I turned on my Blackberry to check email.

My phone worked perfectly. I had all the bars. I had full strength. I had cell phone service. Put more succinctly, I had cell phone service in an area populated by a bunch of women who had given their lives to God and a collection of people who still think we’re living in the early 1800s.

Whoever convinced the population of this area that they needed cell phones is the world’s greatest salesman. END OF DISCUSSION. Prepare the plaque, engrave the company pen and book the trip to Cabo. We have a winner.

I still wonder what these people are doing with their cell phones. Are the Mother Superior and Ezekiel texting each other late at night? Are the nuns listening to choir music on their new 3G iPhones? Are the Amish buying and selling oxen on eBay?

Actually, I don’t care and I doubt the world’s greatest sales person does. For right now, that person has probably just convinced the executives at PennMed that the nursing home residents need motorcycles.