Just Another Day at the Office

Sammi's passions are computers (which we don't let her anywhere near) and telephones. 

Samantha loves talking on the phone. I honestly don’t know where she gets it, because it certainly isn’t from Steve - he abhors the phone and is the last person you’d find talking socially on one - and it’s likely not from me, since his aversion has rubbed off on me over the years and, frankly, I just don’t have the time. But her phone “conversations” are incredibly animated, accurate and appropriate, for someone who loves to gab on the phone. Seriously, her conversations will go something like this:

Samantha (leaning on the couch/table/chair/bed/sink/floor):  Hi, Gramma (or Grampa/Nana/Matthew/Marissa/etc.), how are you today? (pauses) Good! (pauses again) Yessss...okay.  Hahahahaha! (pauses yet again, then gets a horrified look on her face) Oh no!  Uh huh. Yes.  Okay, hold on… (hands the phone to me) It’s Gramma!  (or Grampa/Nana/Matthew/Marissa/etc.)

It’s just the incredibly casual way she leans on some piece of furniture or the floor that cracks me up every time, like a teenager talking to her best friend.  I can see her future very clearly at these moments, and it’s the same one I experienced as a teenager, shut away in my room sharing the juiciest gossip, stalling for time when my parents would come to tell me I’d been on the phone long enough, wishing for my own line so I didn’t have to constantly hear the phone downstairs being picked up and hung up over and over again by someone waiting to make a call…

Nope, I have no idea where she gets it, but I have often wondered what is hard-wired in humans (nature) and what is learned behavior (nurture), and I suspect that what she does is entirely natural.

(sorry about the quality of this one - another cell phone pic, literally)