I'm winning - so far.

My son has been begging me about a new cell phone for a week. He's given me a headache with all the talk of it.

The younger neighbor girl has a new one, his friends are upgrading and his sisters both have updated camera phones.

This makes it very hard to argue against getting a new cell phone.

Since my son is the only one left in middle school, my husband and I decided it was easier to get a hold of him when we have to pick him up after sporting events or practices.

So, my husband caved in and bought him one (I've always said to my girls, you don't get a phone unless you can afford it). That idea changed on the last kid.

It became such a nuisance to try to decide who was picking him up, how late was he staying and where was he.

So, he was given a phone for Christmas.

Now, the talk in the house is how he's able to maneuver a new phone out of us.

Well, the other night, he came home with a used camera phone.

"Where did you get that?" I asked.

"My friend gave it to me," he quickly said showing it off to me. "See, it's really nice."

"Oh, yeah," I said with a twitch in my eye.

Somehow, deep inside, I knew there were more strings attached.

After a couple of hours, my oldest daughter came home from work.

"Mom going to let you buy it?" she asked him in the living room.

My super-duper-quick hawk ears perked up in attention from the kitchen, a good 10 feet away from the living room.

"Um," he said looking at the shining silver phone. "Well, um..."

That was my cue to step in and ask the motherly questions no child wants to hear.

"Buy?" I asked. "You told me he gave it to you. Why didn't you tell me you have to buy it?"

His answers were simple.

"Well, I'm only trying it out and he said I can pay $10 for it," he blurted out.

"That's fine," I said sternly. "I'll let you pay for it out of your own allowance, but I want to talk to his parents about the phone before you get it from him."

That did it. I killed the bargaining process for him.

He told the other little boy that I wanted to talk to his parents, but that was about two weeks ago.

To date, I haven't heard him talk about giving, buying or anything about the phone since.

The boy hasn't called or made any effort to sell his phone to him.

I guess I ruined it for him.

In the long run, I'd rather talk to a parent before a "sale" has gone down than to have a parent like me come knocking on the door looking for the "goods."

Here's closure to one headache.

Score: Mom -- one, son -- negative one.