Okay, kiddies, I need to tell you a cautionary tale.

  When I was in eighth grade, I dropped my phone in a pond in Hobbs. 

  I was without a phone for three months, and it was so sad.

  How it happened was that my eight-year-old brother and I were pushing each other along the edge of the pond, and he knocked it out of my hand. 

  That plop sound of $600 hitting the water made me freak out. I got mad at my brother for making me drop it.

  The next 90 days were like being in solitary confinement. I had no one to talk to after school. No Tiktok, no Snapchat, no Instagram. I was camping.

  Many times I would involuntarily reach for my phone only to have pangs of frustration when nothing was there in my lonely, empty back pocket.

  I resorted to my iPad. It was embarrassing when I had to call my mom and put it on speaker because there was no other option. I was an object of humiliation because people told me how embarrassed I should be; they had no idea.

  The kicker is, I could have had a new phone, but my mother said that if I was going to be that dumb, there needed to be consequences. She made me wait three months to learn a lesson.

  The third week of May, the end finally came. I was so happy with my new iPhone 11 Pro even though it was the same one I had before. I realized how I had taken that earlier phone for granted, never really appreciating it.

  Now, I treat my phone very carefully…never to take it around any water. 

  The lesson here is pushing your little brother is not worth losing your phone no matter how much he deserves it.