The other day we’re in the car. I’m driving, and Dave’s fiddling with his phone. He says, “What’s that? Oh, it’s some old voice mail from you.”
“Didn’t you listen to it?”
“No. I never listen to them. I just call back if I see them. You should just text me.”
“What? Text you? We’re THOSE kind of people now? People who text?”
“Huh?”
“I don’t text.”
“Nobody uses voice mail anymore. You’re on Twitter and Facebook and everything else. You supposed to be Little Miss Social Media, but you don’t text? Just text me.”
“I don’t text. It was my one last hold out. Is this because you hang out with college kids all day? What’s next? Sexting?”
“Just text me next time. OK?”
“Whatever, but I’m not sexting you.”
I first logged on to AOL in 1994. I got an email account in 1995. I bought one of those obnoxious Push-to-Talk phones when they were still cool. I started blogging in 2007. I started tweeting and facebooking in 2008. (I never had a MySpace account. Something I’m kind of proud of actually.)
I use Pinterest, Klout, LinkedIn, Google +, Instagram and YouTube. I signed up for FourSquare, but I don’t use it since I decided everyone doesn’t need to know where I am all the time. I feel lost if I leave my house without my smart phone.
But…
The one thing I refused to do…
TEXT.
Good grief! Why would anyone want to pick at that stupid little keyboard when they could just make a phone call or type an email on a real keyboard? Even worse, all that abbreviating and intentional misspelling is just a brutal, murderous thing to do to our beautiful, complicated English language. How can you write without using complete sentences? Oh, the horror of it all!
Now Dave’s started texting me all the time, and I’m forced to cooperate or be cut off from communication with him all day. I never learned any of those abbreviations or shortcuts. It takes a long time to type out a grammatically correct sentence with proper punctuation on my little Android keyboard.
This is pretty much the only texty thing I know how to do — 🙂 (OK. Somehow the internet converted that into an actual smiley face. You can do that?)
Oh, and LOL.
I don’t even know how to make a little picture of a heart.
Oh my word. I can’t learn how to text at 37. Where’s my old Nextel and it’s comforting, shrill “ping”?
Too funny! I guess we all have our “thing,” huh? Me, I hate talking on the phone. Absolutely hate it. If I’m going to chat with someone, I’d much rather do it face-to-face over coffee, so I love texting and email.
But no, there will be no sexting here either.
What? You can’t carry a keyboard in your purse and plug it into your phone?? Walmart is pushing those
EZ Keys!!
Oh, I LOVE this! I could have written this! I’ve blogged, tweeted, and what-not for over four years now. I adore social media. But I simply REFUSE to text. Makes my SILs and cousins so mad. Fortunately, my husband has no interest in it either so, thus far, it’s been all good. We’ll see how long we both hold out on that… (p.s. I go so far as to have texts blocked by my phone– I really, REALLY don’t like it.)
LOL! Texting is really efficient for me, but it can be distracting when I am working so I try to only text when necessary. Hope you enjoy learning to do it. Stopping in from SITS! 🙂