Someday my 11-year-old son is going to regret his habit of checking up on me every time I go out at night.

Last night, I was watching a HawaiiSlam event when my purse started vibrating.

I pulled out my phone and saw my son’s name. It was 10:13 p.m.

“Where are you,” he asked.

I told him I was exactly where I’d told him I’d be and he asked, “When are you coming home?”

“Don’t worry about it and go to bed,” I said. “It’s past your bed time already.”

That was the first in a series of phone calls he made to check up on me and make sure that I was either still listening to poetry or on my way home.

I felt compelled to answer. The kids were in good hands, but there COULD have been an emergency. As it turns out, he had no urgent news to pass on the entire night, but not only did he call repeatedly, he even waited up until I came home.

“It’s cute that he checks up on you,” one friend said after the first call.

Another one told me that I’d be able to get back at him later.

Yeah, I will.

When he starts going out at night, I’m going to see how cute he thinks it is to have his mommy calling him periodically just to see what he’s up to.

One day, I’ll put his phone into “driving mode” so when I call, his phone will announce, “You have a phone call… from MOMMY!” He already doesn’t find that amusing. I wonder if he’ll think it’s funny when it happens on his first date.

I’m kidding, of course. I fully expect that he’ll call me to check in and report every mundane detail of his evenings out and check in every time he changes venue.

If he doesn’t, though, then he’d better watch out.

When my 11-year-old son’s cell phone survived a full cycle in the washing machine last month, I was impressed.

Still, I wasn’t surprised when it didn’t survive its second trip through the wash a week-or-so later. Technically, it might have survived the moisture again if it hadn’t also been thrown into the dryer. We’ll never know.

Since he refuses to make keeping track of his phone a priority, I figured replacing it didn’t need to be a priority either. I ordered a cheap new-used phone off eBay and it took a couple weeks for it to arrive and get activated.

I hadn’t realized how much I missed him having a phone.

I admit I wasn’t thrilled to have him call me dozens of times to “test” the new phone, but the real calls made me smile.

He called to tell me that he saw a commercial for a reality show that’s “kind of like ‘Survivor’ ” and something we should definitely schedule on the TiVo so we can watch it together.

Then he had his 4-year-old sister call to give me a blow-by-blow description of the movie “Horton Hears a Who,” which, by her account, (POTENTIAL SPOILER ALERT) is about a boy who didn’t talk to his father, and then he did.  (SPOILER OVER)

Hmmm… I thought it was about an elephant who believed “a person’s a person, no matter how small.” Horton, the same elephant who hatched an egg, has some of the greatest moral values of any fictional character and I think my daughter’s due for some Dr. Seuss storytime to make sure she understands the messages.

But I digress. An hour after my daughter finished telling me all about the very tiny Whos, my son called back.

I think he called from Starbucks. He was irritated that he’d ordered a hot strawberry steamer and was given strawberry milk poured over ice instead. It wasn’t even a Strawberries and Creme Frappuccino! He was aghast. “They don’t know what they’re doing,” he complained (to me, but not to the barista, by the way).

A little while later, he called again.

“When are you coming home?” he asked.

Now THAT’S why I really missed him having a cell phone.

It’s practically the only way that he’ll ever let on that he might miss me.