What’s Next if I Can’t Text?

I’m just going to admit it. I don’t understand text messaging. I finally humbled myself enough to ask my co-worker how it’s actually done. I figured it must be something way simpler than typing on the little tiny keys, bearing teensy-weensie numbers, of itsy-bitsy cell phones. It has to be easier or, surely, everyone wouldn’t be doing it all day and all night long. And it must be a snap or people would simply call. Right? Well, wrong.

Not only does texting require tactile and visual contact with the keypad but you have to press each button more than once if the letter you’re typing corresponds with the second or third letter on the button of the keypad!!! Did you know this????!!!! You must because you’re all texting as often as I’m breathing!! I have to tell you, I don’t get it.

My co-worker tried to reassure me as she demonstrated, and I sat staring at her with my mouth agape, that she’s gotten so good at this she can do it with no problem while she’s driving! I’m not reassured. In fact, I’m terrified. How many drivers are out there correlating and pressing while they’re driving near me?? Apparently a lot.

Back in junior high (or middle school) we passed the time writing notes. Our only alternative, as we sat captive, was to listen to the teacher–God forbid!! But I haven’t felt the need to pass a note in quite some time. Not even in the sales meetings I attend every Wednesday, where there can be a lot to mock surreptitiously. I just don’t have a need for this kind of communication. Am I missing something?

If I have something to say to someone, I pick up the telephone and call. If that person’s not available, I leave a message and I end up getting a call back. Astonishingly, I haven’t missed one vital piece of information this way. Not that I know of anyway.

So, I’m sitting here scratching my head, wondering why everyone else is texting. I guess it’s a way of quietly communicating with another person in an instant. If your husband’s in a meeting and you want to rage about the fact that you fell, sleepily, into the toilet AGAIN, this could be a convenience. But don’t managers frown upon employees looking down and pressing buttons while they’re supposed to be listening? It seems to me like you can’t text while doing most other activities–grocery shopping, getting a manicure, jogging, taking salsa lessons, and DRIVING–so, in my little pea brain, I’m thinking it only serves a purpose if you’re sitting around doing nothing. In that case you should be able to call or email. I guess I’m confused.

We all know it’s a sure sign you’re becoming obsolete when you stop understanding things that are all the rage. I may actually be teetering on the brink of Fogey Canyon. So be it. I know me and I remember how, at the age of four, paper dolls could send me into a fit of rage that would make Sean Penn look docile. The stupid little tabs wouldn’t stay put and my last nerve would be spent ripping them into little shreds. Finally, I swore off the maddening things.

It would be the same, for me, with text messaging. I can’t see two feet in front of me anymore so I’d be squinting and holding the thing as far away from me as possible. Then, I’d get all frazzled and start pushing the wrong buttons or the right buttons the wrong number of times. Then I’d cuss and throw the phone across my car. See? I don’t even do it and I’m already imagining texting while driving. Nope, I just can’t go there.

But you all go right ahead. Plunge forward into the age of technology and non-stop communication. Keep blazing new trails (hopefully not into new cars) and pioneering innovative ideas until there is absolutely no dead space in a 24 hour period. Just think of yourselves as tweakers without the meth. And I’ll applaud you as you forge the way into the future. I’ll clap wildly from my spot at the edge of Fogey Canyon but I won’t be able to text you because, as far as I know, it still takes two hands to clap and my toes will be dangling, along with my feet, over the abyss.