Teenage Tech Ninja! -

As most of you know, the Hectic Clan lives in Central Kansas. We are surrounded by wheat fields and cattle farms. As such, when the kids compete in school sports they often have to travel well over an hour at the middle school level, and a three to four hour trip is not uncommon for High School athletes. Before they have their driver’s licenses, coordinating rides home after athletic competitions rises to the level of an actual competition in and of itself! When our oldest started competing way back in the early part of the century we had to do a lot of guesswork to figure out when to arrive at the school. In those pre-cellphone days it was hard to know when the team would roll in. To complicate matters, we have to drive a bit to get to the school, a miscalculation meant the kids (and their coaches) could be miffed if I was late.

Over the years, we’ve enjoyed the advances in communication technology. The kids can now call from their cell phones when they’re headed home and give a much more precise estimation of when they’ll be back. This has made life a lot easier for all of us. Fewer nights where I’m sitting at the school waiting for the bus to arrive coupled with fewer mad dashes down the country roads to keep the kids and coaches from having to wait for me to get there. Pretty much a win-win.

With each kiddo, the level of accuracy in estimation has increased. First we had the call when the bus was leaving the far-off gym. That gave us a decent idea of arrival time, but didn’t take into account whether the team would stop for dinner or whether the bus driver was Safety Sam (a really slow and safe driver) or Mad Mary (who always seemed to cut 20% off the trips…I always feared she was speeding the entire way). Eventually we got calls enroute. Some coaches even exhorted the kids to call when the bus was 10 minutes away. If I waited for that call they were guaranteed I would be 10 minutes late, since our drive is a minimum of 20 minutes to the school.

A couple weeks ago, Colleen, our newest middle schooler, came up with an awesome solution to let me know exactly where they were. She has a brand new iPhone, so she pulled up Apple Maps and had it locate where she was. Then she entered the school’s location and had Apple Maps calculate the time to arrival. Not only did she send me the arrival time, but she sent me the location information. She started doing this 45 minutes from the school, so I got 25 minutes of updates before I needed to leave the house. It worked brilliantly, and I pulled in exactly one minute before the bus. We also agreed on a pickup spot that was away from the other parents to cut down on waiting for everybody to pull out. She hopped off the bus, into the car, and off we drove. In 42 minutes I was home. That was definitely a record for us. At a minimum I’m usually waiting 10 or more minutes. I’m not counting the one time I waited two hours due to scrambled information and a broken-down bus. I keep trying to wipe out that memory, but that subzero wait in the car just won’t go away.

Honestly, I was quite impressed with Colleen’s use of technology. She has watched me over the years as I’ve tried to coordinate with the other kids. She’s heard me gripe about having to wait, and she’s heard them whine about how the coaches get angry when parents are late. She’s not only witnessed those events, but she made a plan and used her new tech to create a really useful solution. The most amazing part to me was that she came up with the solution entirely on her own. Nobody here gave her the idea, and when I talked to other parents about it, none of their kids had used this solution. She proved that she was a pioneer, a forward-thinker, and all around amazing. Not that I’m biased or anything!