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If part of growing up is recognizing your limitations, then I have more recognition than Kim Kardashian’s most famous asset.  Among the things I’ve learned about myself over the years is this: If smartphones had been invented when I was a new mother I would have missed the best moments of my son’s childhood. (For those of you born in the new millennium, there were no iPhones, Blackberries, YouTube, texting, Facebook or Twitter when I was a new mom in 1995.) You could not be bombarded with messages from your 200 best friends and followers every moment of every day.

And for that I am eternally grateful.

Because for me, smartphones are the new cigarettes: they are addictive, they are dangerous and you can burn people with them.

It took me most of a year to finally quit cigarettes, and I was mostly a casual, not always daily, smoker (for 10 years). But still, I was definitely addicted.

I grew up in a family were my mother smoked four packs of cigarettes a day; my father smoked two packs a day and he was considered a light smoker. My mom quit smoking every time she was pregnant (four times in six years) but she took it up again in the hospital right after the umbilical cord was cut. When I was a kid, there was never a time that my mom did not have a cigarette smoldering somewhere.

My parents were notorious for burning holes in everything – clothing, the tops of end tables, the kitchen counters. My mom was the queen of appliqués – my father’s tennis shirts were littered with little embroidered ladybugs and leprechauns that my mom sewed on to cover the burn holes. I am sure if you look closely at my body I have scars from accidentally getting in the way of my mother’s cigarette embers. There is just no way you can hold a baby in one hand and a cigarette in the other hand and not do some damage.

Listen, when I was a new mother, I remember carrying my son in my arms and one day as I walked into his room I accidentally bumped his head on the doorframe (he had grown an inch overnight, apparently). And I was paying attention. (It didn’t bother him at all. I cried for 30 minutes.) Imagine if I had been on my cell phone! You’ve seen the videos of people’s mishaps while walking and texting – the girl who fell into a manhole, the woman who tripped into a mall fountain.

I’m fairly certain that I would have been one of those mothers. I have to fight the urge to pick up my phone when it dings and I’m driving. If I have to use the bathroom when I’m out to dinner, I check my email in the stall. I aimlessly wander through Facebook before I even get out of bed in the morning, and I don’t really actually know half the people whose posts show up in my News Feed – or if I know them, I’ve forgotten exactly how I know them. High school? College? My first job? And why do I feel the need to Google tomorrow’s weather as I pull into my driveway? It’s not only dangerous, it’s usually not even accurate.

Being well aware of this limitation of mine – the hold that handheld devices have over me -- I am continuously thankful that Steven Jobs waited until 2007 to launch today’s most addictive gadgets. 

Getting back to the connection between smartphones and cigarettes? I'm just saying that cigarette smoking is distracting, dangerous and requires the use of at least one of your hands and your mouth. Same with cell phones. 

When I see a new mom with her baby at a restaurant, and he’s in the high chair and she’s texting on her phone and doesn’t even realize that the spoon is nowhere near his mouth – it makes my heart hurt. I want to yell, “Put it down, put it down, put it down! Our babies grow up so fast! In 10 minutes that boy will have his driver's license and will be asking you for the car keys!”

Worse is when I see a mom driving with her baby. He’s strapped in a car seat in the second row of her mommy mobile which she bought for its safety rating and she's texting and talking and driving all at the same time.

I want to roll down my window and shout, “Baby on board! Hang up and sing Barney!”

Not only is it dangerous to text and drive (no matter what age and even if no one’s on board), but the baby is watching you. And I promise there will come a time when you're at the dinner table with your family and you will hear yourself say to your kids, “No cell phones at the table, kids, I’ve told you a hundred times. Put it away or lose it.”

And they’ll say? “I’ll put mine down when you put yours down, Mom.” (Well, they might not enunciate this, and it might sound like “Ughguh” and look like rolling eyes, but this is the rough translation. I am fluent in teenspeak.)

When I was little, my brothers and sister and I would hide my mom and dad’s cigarette packages; we begged them to stop smoking. We hadn’t read the latest surgeon general’s report but we didn’t like the smoke. We knew it made them cough, too.

And yet, I ended up a smoker. In fact, all of my siblings ended up smoking and having to quit. And quitting, for all of us, involved hard work, emotional backsliding and resisting temptation. But we felt better, healthier and more connected within months.

I long for the day when pulling out our cell phones in public is viewed with as much intolerance and dagger-looks as smoking is today. 

I’m one of the lucky ones – I’m old. Let me give you the benefit of my years: hang up and talk to your kids. Hang up and laugh. Hang up and have dinner together. Hang up and be present with whomever you’re with. And watch out for door frames.

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