Today we were riding bikes along a trail through some beautifully wooded and prairie grassed areas. Just at sunset. I was in awe of the beauty.

And I saw a girl walking her dog on a dirt trail in the woods. On her cell phone.

My first thought, I kid you not, was, “Now that’s a shame. She can’t even walk her dog without talking on her phone. Yep, THAT’S an addiction.”

But as I looked ahead at my husband and daughter, and glanced back at my son, I realized something.

The girl was young, college-aged. She most likely had recently left her family and friends and all she’s known for eighteen years. This isn’t considered different, or even pity-evoking. It’s normal. It’s “coming-of-age”. It’s what-you-do.

And if it weren’t for this rite of passage, she would have been walking through those woods with her best friend, or her mother. Or maybe her high school sweetheart. Instead, she was clutching her inanimate link to her old life – her phone.

I’ve heard some accusations in the blogging world that we lack deep relationships with people because it’s become too easy to have hundreds of shallow on-line ones with people we will never see face-to-face.

But as a person who tends to change zip codes every two years, I would like to ask the blogging world if maybe, just maybe, the reason for shallow relationships is because the world has grown too small and it it no longer abnormal to not only leave your town, but also your state, and even your country to gain a college education, and then again to get a job?

I’ve read that the average American will move 11.7 times in his or her lifetime.

Don’t you think maybe that might have something to do with our relationship struggles?

And maybe email and Twitter and instant messaging are what’s keeping us connected with those we love?

Perhaps all these online connections are keeping us from forming new relationships where we live now. But as a mother of two young children, I can tell you now that IT IS HARD to get out there and meet people when you have dishes and laundry piling up and naptimes to work around.

I long for the days from before I was born, where you grew old and died in the same neighborhood you were born. I would know my neighbors and always have family and friends at hand. I wouldn’t write a blog. I wouldn’t use a cell phone. I wouldn’t email. I wouldn’t need to.

And I definitely wouldn’t have days where the only conversation I had was with my two-year-old about the importance of purple spoons.