Textually Speaking

These days, I consider myself a pretty textually active guy. One of the biggest problems I find in text messaging, aside from the confounding acronyms and hybrid “text-speak”, is the lack of a 'message received' confirmation. Sure your phone tells you the message is sent, but unlike email, there's nothing to let you know the person at the other end actually got the message let alone read it. This then leads to you to send the same message three times, with sixteen follow up messages saying, "Did you get my first message?" Even then, a "yes" doesn't really help. Which message did they think was the first? Was it the first one I sent, or the first one they received - and they may not be the same one. So then you have to text them back to explain your dilemma and ask them to text you back what you said in the first message they received from you. By this time you are truly flustered with the included predictive text correcting feature on your phone. I told the last woman I was texting to, “Come on over I have tons of STDs. In fact, I have STDs that aren’t even out yet!” It took a while for me to notice that my phone was correcting my spelling of “DVDs” whether I wanted it to or not. It also took a longer while for her to ever talk to me again.

The next girlfriend wasn’t any better. When you have to grab a 10 year old out of line at Starbucks to help you decipher your girlfriend’s recent text message, you’re probably dating someone that is too young for you. You would think that I really hate text messaging. And maybe it is easier to actually call someone. Except if they have voicemail. Then that's a whole different kind of hell. Keep in mind; in either case you can't take the message back once you have sent it. It is instantaneous. You could always play the "Oh, I meant that for someone else" game. That is, unless you just texted, "I want to be on top of you right now!" to your mother. Well, actually, I haven't but you may have, and I am trying to empathize. This is where a follow up phone call is more appropriate than a textplanation. Some things cannot be explained away in 160 characters or less. Just why is it we have that precise limitation anyway? Maybe it is because of that 160 character limit that we have to endure things like LOL for “laughing out loud”, B4 instead of “before”, IDK in lieu of “I don’t know”, BRB for “be right back” and ATM, which does not mean “automatic teller machine.” Instead, in the texting world it stands for “at the moment”. In fact, if it were not for that 160 character limit, I would have just “texted” this to everyone.