IMAGINARY FRIENDS AND MAGAZINES

I've always dreaded the two weeks when I'll have three teenage daughters in the house. Not because I dislike them-quite the contrary-but because I've never been sure how many phones we'll need.

Kasmira is 19, Alexandra 15 and Amelia 12, you see. Amelia turns 13 on November 8. Kasmira doesn't attain 20 until November 22, at which time she might be expected to use the telephone in a more sensible and conservative manner.

The advent of mobile phones has either largely taken care of the problem or clouded it. In addition to my mobile and Theresa's mobile and the family landline phone, Kasmira has at least four mobiles of which two work, and Alexandra and Amelia each have a mobile. Except that Alexandra and Amelia have both broken their mobiles within the past week.

My mobile, incidentally, almost never rings. I don't give the number out because I don't want it to bother me. I had my first mobile phone for six weeks before I lost it, and lost it without ever receiving an incoming call.

Anyway, like most parents I've adopted various stratagems to try to keep the girls off the land line. I typically refuse to walk past Alexandra on the phone, for example, and instead stand there going, in Linus from Peanuts voce: "Hi Boo Boo. Hi Boo Boo's friend," until the poor girl has to acknowledge me and explain to her friend on the line what's going on. Occasionally they've pre-empted her by asking why Myles is being so irritating.

And so it came to pass that Boo Boo broke up with her most regular phone friend, James. Thinking it an opportunity lost, I presented myself in the kitchen the next morning, "Hi Boo Boo. Hi Boo Boo's egg."

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500 Rum Rummy is still the family card game, but Myles has got us back into Uno a little more. He's still easily enough amused to be up for a game of Go Fish! occasionally, too, but none of the rest of us enjoy the entirely tedious War.

So the other day Alexandra and I had committed to whatever he wanted to play, and he decided War. We kind of desperately talked him out of it, me offering the clincher that "It's totally a game of chance, so that's something you can even do by yourself. You don't even have to pretend that you have two brains!"

I felt a little bit bad about this later, when I found him sitting there playing War against himself. "Um, when I did stuff like that, when I was younger you know, I used to pretend that I was playing against Tom Seaver, who pitched for the Mets. You could pretend that you're playing against Indiana Jones or something, you know, there's no shame in losing against Indiana Jones."

Myles calmly looked up, and looked me in the eye like I was an idiot.

He casually gestured with his shoulder and said, "I'm playing against that magazine."

I want to go home. No, come to think of it I want more stories about Newfins!