"The cordless phones don't have enough power to last through a five-minute conversation," my 10-year-old daughter complained.

"That's because they aren't being replaced on the chargers," I replied. "They can't recharge if they just get left lying around."

This is precisely why we had to buy an old-fashioned, attach-to-the-wall phone several months ago. With three phone-using (or abusing) children between the ages of 10 and 17, even if we could find the phone, much of the time it was dead.

"No," Shayna protested, "it was on the charger all day yesterday... Oh wait... Alyssa [the 12-year-old] got on the phone and she probably had one of her two- or three-hour conversations."

"Exactly," I pointed out. "And that runs down the battery."

"The living room phone and the phone in Mikel's room usually die so Alyssa can't talk and neither can anybody else," Shayna went on. "You know yesterday I was on the phone with a friend when the one in the living room died then i called her back one the one in Mikel's room and IT died while we were still talking so i had to call back about 5 times."

I was well into my thirties before I ever got my first cordless phone. I'm still not sure about them, because of the drawbacks I mentioned above. I pointed out a fail-safe alternative to my daughter, who has probably never lived without access to cordless phones:

"The one on the wall in the kitchen will never die."

"Coolness!" she replied, like the magic of uninterupted phone calls had never occurred to her.