My dear nephew just got a cellphone.
Nine year old kid with a cellphone.
And, to my surprise, he's not extraordinary for having a cellphone because the school now allow cellphones, although with a very strict set of rules, like no phone while school's in session (which leave them to... what? 15 minutes recess?)
I remember my days when I was nine. The cordless phone hasn't even been invented yet.
And now, my dear nephew starts on sending me text messages to me from Jakarta, which I love because it's really cute, but it also makes me scared how vast the change of childhood experience that he has compared to mine.

It was mortifying enough that when a few years after my high school years, I saw high school girls with make up. Make-freaking-up.
I remember thinking, those kids, minor kids, plug their eyebrows to get the Krisdayanti effect. They butchered their innocence with their make up. But it was nothing, I guess, compared to nine-year-olds with cellphones.

Now, my sweetheart sends me messages almost daily, without fully knowing the concept of our time difference that it might be 2 am my time when he sent it. And he's busy telling me what he's doing (I'm eating doughnut or I'm going for a swim), and asking me questions like when I'm going home (which I answered, when I'm becoming a bride, on which he answered: wow... a bride, how cool!).
And as weird as it might be, I embrace this phenomenon joyously, may I say, a bit of relief.
I always fear that he'd forget me.
First he'd forget my face, then finally totally forget that he has another aunt.
But now, I'm relieved.
That kiddo hasn't forgot about me.
That I exist in his world.
That I matter.
That he misses me.
And that feeling...
it's priceless. Heartmelting. Joyful. And just plain wonderful.