The Heroism of a Two Year Old and a Mobile Phone

I have written at length about the obnoxiousness of mobile phones and the damage they have done to interpersonal communication in our modern age. It is an age in which people create social bombs to force in person conversation and talk shows tell the audience that mobile phones are prohibited just to get a pleasant show experience. On occasion there is a story that really reaches out and touches you ever so and reminds you that between all of the bad there is the occasional good thing that comes from mobile phones.

I remember the first time I held a mobile phone. It was 1997, and I was nearly twenty years old. When I see children now who are not only holding mobile phones but who have their own, it makes me feel like an old man, like the kind of person who tells stories that start with, “When I was your age…” I generally think that children should not be using a mobile phone — naturally I think that if I survived just fine without having my own phone all that time, they can as well.

I read with great interest the story of a two year old girl whose understanding of how mobile phones work led to her saving her mother’s life. Basically, she found her mother in a position in which she was not conscious, realized that something was wrong (this in itself is an impressive feat for a two year old child) and then had the calm of mind to call her grandmother to inform her that something was wrong. Her grandmother called for an ambulance just in time to save her life.

“I don’t know how my daughter knew to call my mom or anything. I never taught her how to use the phone and she saved me that day,” Taylor said.

The family said doctors told them Taylor would have died had she stayed lying there for 10 more minutes.

I can actually answer the mother’s question based on my experiences as the proud father of Chaim Yosef Davidescu which is that children, especially in the first few years of life, deeply observe and imitate that which their parents do. I would think it is safe to assume that Taylor used her mobile phone with great frequency and that her daughter must have observed the steps that she took every single time she made a call.

Let us hope that we can keep mobile phones more in the realm of useful technology and less of a thing to hassle and bother us in our increasingly Panopticonic world.