Overread at Table 1: When the Pastor Tells Us We Need to Cut Back on Our Screen Time

 

When the Paster Tells Us We Need to Cut Back on Our Screen Time

(October 2026)

 

My sister has a brain tumor.

The doctors gave her two years.

She’s now going on five.

 

My employee emailed the Director.

She said that I hurt her feelings

when I asked her to adhere

to the company mandated hours.

 

My husband told me last week

that he loves me deeply,

but he doesn’t find me sexually attractive.

He said it as gently as he could,

in that sweet, calm voice of his

that makes me want to bash in his teeth

with my mother’s cast iron skillet.

 

My adult daughters don’t call anymore,

not since they got married.

A mutual on Twitter

(I will never call it “X”)

told me that they will start calling

once they start having babies.

They’ll need grandma for babysitting

while they go out for mimosas with their

girlfriends.

 

My youngest son, still living at home,

takes only 3 hours of College classes a semester.

I don’t even know what he’s studying.

He only comes out of his room

fifteen minutes each day, to heat up

some Hot Pockets and return to his

gaming.

 

And my feed,

my God,

my feed tells me of women being raped

at Cornell,

murdered in mass graves in South Africa,

a botched execution of a woman

who killed her rival

who was putting the moves on her boyfriend,

a woman in a wheelchair

after killing her babies,

and my phone tells me that I used it

1 hour and 14 minutes longer than the previous week,

and my pastor said that we touch our phones

at least 100 times per day,

and another article says that we spend

four to five hours per day

on social media.

 

And still they wonder why

women are always so angry.

 

Some mornings, I awake,

and for the briefest instant,

I am fifteen years old, and the day is

bright and filled with friends to hang out

with at the mall after school, and we’ll

have pizza and ice cream

and we’ll laugh and talk about boys

and stupid teachers and dimwitted parents

and whatever movie is playing that week.

 

Then, I’ll turn in the bed, see

your hamhock shoulder, you

snoring like a bear, and I will again

be

all that I am now,

and all that I am now

will have an overwhelming urge,

to run out the room,

out the front door,

down the street,

naked but for the nightgown

with print of reindeer and sheep

shouting HAPPY SLEEP-MAS!

and I will scream

and scream

and scream

and never ever stop

 

screaming.