DR. WALLACE: I'm a junior in high school and I have a mother who, although she's only 38, apparently likes living in the dark ages! I have a smartphone and so does she, but despite my repeated attempts to show her how to use the calendar and keep notes organized on her phone, she refuses to do so. She mentions to me that it's too confusing and too hard, then she always ends up saying it's too much trouble!

So, what does she do? She takes those old cheesy paper calendars that get mailed out around the holidays in December in January and she saves three or four of them and puts them up at different places around our house. Then she'll hand write all of her appointments and all the things she needs to do in her daily, weekly and monthly life on them.

I don't want to read them, I don't want to know every intimate detail of everything she needs to get done in a week or a month, but I cannot help glancing at them because they're sitting out there in plain sight in various places. There's nothing terrible on them, but I feel it's a case of too much information being printed right there in front of anyone's eyes who walks by. And this is what bothers me because some of my friends come over to our house after school to study with me or get a snack or do something and they're always asking me why my mother has all these calendars all over the house with scribbled notes on them that everyone can plainly read! What should I do about this? How can I get my mom to use today's modern technology to stop putting every detail of our life right there on every available wall in our house? — Mom's Calendars Embarrass Me, via email

MOM'S CALENDARS EMBARRASS ME: My advice at this point is to simply let it go for now. Your friends have already seen what they've seen, you've read what you've read and your mother continues to just do her thing in her own way.

Although you've offered your mother fine opportunities for tutorials on how to use technology to keep her calendars aligned in a compact and portable way using her smartphone, she continues to wish to pursue the old school way of doing things. My advice is to respect her decision, but to occasionally offer to help her with some different telephone tips that do not specifically bring up the calendar issue. For example, if you've learned something valuable on your own cell phone over the last several months, take a moment to show your mother how to utilize this identical idea on her phone. Perhaps over time she will become more comfortable overall and at some point, wish to revest her calendar issue!

HE JUST SEEMED TO VANISH ONE DAY

DR. WALLACE: I'm 16 and have been dating a boy my age for two months. He tried to get physical with me a few times in the last two weeks, but each time I told him I was not going to do that. Then he suddenly one stopped responding to my text messages at school. When I finally saw him, he told me that he has been spending more time with his guy friends and he doesn't have time to see me anymore.

What's up with this? That's not much of an explanation, and despite my attempts to engage him to respond to me further, he has done nothing to communicate with me at all over the past 10 days. How can I get him to respond and resume dating me? We never got into a fight or an argument at all, so I don't understand why he has vanished. — It Makes No Sense, via email

IT MAKES NO SENSE: It appears to me that this guy's interest in you was likely mainly physical, and at one point he felt he could pressure you into engaging him in physical activities he wished to pursue. However, you correctly stood up for yourself and told him you were not going to engage his requests to get more physical, at that point he withdrew from dating you, and of course, gave you a weak excuse without being honest with you as to why he has disengaged. You handled yourself quite well, in my opinion you did everything right. What happened here was an important learning experience for you. Going forward be sure to focus on what your perception of a guy's intentions are as the two of you interact during the dating process.

I trust you'll find much better dating partners available to you and that you'll gravitate towards a great one sooner rather than later.

Dr. Robert Wallace welcomes questions from readers. Although he is unable to reply to all of them individually, he will answer as many as possible in this column. E-mail him at [email protected]. To find out more about Dr. Robert Wallace and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

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