My daughter turned 27 today.

I feel like every year on her birthday or Mother’s Day, my daughter likes to remind me that I have a child so will never stop being a parent. This year, it happened a little after midnight. I texted her to wish her a happy birthday. She texted me back to tell me she was en route back home from visiting friends in San Diego.

Last month, she insisted we download this tracker app (excuse me, location sharing app), which is very Big Brother, but also very convenient for me not having to constantly ask her where she is in time and space as a flight attendant. I kept pushing back because of privacy, and she kept countering that we need to stop pretending like that’s even a thing anymore. I also pushed back because we can do location sharing on our phones, and she countered that this app is better because it automatically checks her into airports and also knows where she is while flying. Needless to say, I relented, or I wouldn’t be telling you all of this.

Anyway, one of the features of said app is to see how much battery life a person has on their phone, so you can ping them to CHARGE YOUR PHONE. When I checked to see where my daughter was on her trip, I noticed that she was at 4% so pinged her, of course. She called me a few minutes later because her phone was NOT charging because it said she had liquid in the charger port.

Her: “My phone is about to die! I thought it was charging this entire time. What should I do?”

Me: “Where are you? Are you on I-5?” (I know true Angelenos call it “The 5,” but we have not yet been broken so have stuck to our East Coast roots…so far.)

Her: “I don’t know. I don’t know where I am. I just pulled over because I saw my phone wasn’t charging.”

Me: “Okay, well, just–”

And then we got disconnected. So I zoomed in on her location and saw that she was at/near a Chevron. So I tried to call her back to tell her to go to the gas station so she could call me, but I kept getting the whole “This phone is not accepting calls” message.

So then I hoped that she knew to go to the gas station to either call me or get a map.

After a few minutes, she texted me and said that she had her work iPad (thank God!) so was downloading Google Maps there so she could get home. I texted her and told her that if that didn’t work, here are the directions for getting home.

Once she got home (around 1 a.m.), she told me that she kept declining my calls because every time I called, her battery dropped another percent. She also told me that she would not have thought to go into the gas station, and that she probably would have just sat in her car quietly (hahahahahaha) panicking and praying for a miracle. Also, she is pretty sure that her phone got wet after she spilled something on herself. It was fine this morning after it dried out.

So we learned some important lessons:

Slice of Life is a writing challenge hosted by Two Writing Teachers.

1. If someone’s phone is dying, TEXT. Calling uses more battery life.
2. This generation does not know about gas stations as a way to ask for help because they always have their phones and therefore expect to use those phones to get out of a mishap*.
3. We need to get a paper map to keep in the car in case something like that happens again. I told her that we could look at it, and then mark where home is, and the major roads/highways that lead there in case all electronics fail.
4. The app was worth a download because I knew exactly where she was and exactly how to direct her home. If it came to it, I probably could/would have called the gas station or road side assistance to get them to her if she had just given up on everything.

* We have kind of talked about this before when I explained to my daughter that one of the ways me and my friends learned our way around town was getting lost all the time. We knew how to look for the major roads or landmarks or to say, okay, well, we know this is a loop so even if we go the wrong way, we’ll eventually get where we’re going*. This GPS generation has never had to do that, so don’t know the thrill or the terror of figuring it out.

*I think I mentioned this here before, but living on the West Coast is weird because the ocean is in the wrong direction. When I first moved her, I mentioned to a friend that I could never remember which highway I was supposed to take, and she very helpfully said, if you’re going west, you’re going toward the ocean. That was also helpful because I live on the east side, so. You know. I need to go east, generally speaking. And my daughter knew she needed to keep going north, but that was about it.

In conclusion, teach your Gen Zers what to do if their phone loses power and also get them a paper map. And get yourself a paper map, too, especially if you’ve moved across the country and still don’t know where things are.