Csm you resd yhis massage? (Translation: Can you read this message?)

I am an awesome speller. I can see a word once and my brain takes a snapshot of it and then recreating it is a breeze. Back in the old days, we actually had a spot on our report cards specifically for spelling and mine always sported an “A”. This was before schools introduced “creative spelling” or not counting spelling as part of your grade. As competent as I am at spelling, the opposite is true of the phenomenon called texting. I’m severely challenged. Some might go so far as to label me Thumb Disabled.

Up until a year ago I was still hanging on to my precious flip phone and was proud of it. I was the brunt of jokes at work. Didn’t bother me. Didn’t care about not receiving texts nor did I want to send them. I would watch people texting moving their thumbs in a crazy, maniacal manner and wonder why not just call the person? I was disdainful when people had their phones out in restaurants or were in meetings and you heard the constant “zzzzzz”, “zzzzzz”, “zzzzzz” of the vibrating phone. I thought to myself, “Turn the damn thing off!!”

Then one very sad day my trusty flip phone battery died and I had to face the reality that they stopped making these batteries a gazillion years ago. That left me no option but to join the 21^st century.  I got a smart phone.

Learning how to maneuver a smart phone might as well have been learning how to operate the instruments in a cockpit. There were more bells and whistles than I knew what to do with. But the one thing I know I needed to learn was to text. Now, you think it’s easy – just type, dummy. Right? But I’m not talking about learning the keyboard. I’m talking about hitting the right key in a miniscule space that is 10 times smaller than the end of my finger. Really, how DO you DO that?

My messages come out something like this:

Instead of: “What time do I have to be there?”

It is… “What time do I have to pee there?”

Instead of: “I don’t want to go there.”

It is … “I don’t want to ho there.”

Instead of: “I haven’t had any luck lately.”

It is… “I haven’t had any _uck lately.” (You get what I mean)

This is a text I recently sent to my sister. “I dhut y be computer off and that’s when I got the massage.” It was supposed to be, “I shut my computer off and that’s when I got the message.” (Seriously – not making this up)

I text like some kind of pervert or something.

And what about the pressure? I receive a text and in the time it takes me to text back and correct all the mistakes four more texts come in asking me more questions, which means more responses, which means more frustration, which means texting can become incredibly stressful. It’s like, “What the hell! Give me some time to type with these chubby, wrinkly, uncoordinated fingers will ya???!!!!”  I can see myself talking to a psychiatrist and he asks, “What seems to be the cause of your anxiety Patti?” And I answer, “It’s texting. I need drugs.”

And really - texting and driving? I might as well just drive the car right up a pole and be done with it.

I may never get the hang of the thumb thing and you know what? I don’t really care. My family and friends can somehow decipher the texts and that’s all I care about. I don’t even bother correcting the crazy mistakes anymore. Hopefully they know I’m not really deranged. Texting and sending pictures can be fun, but I never want to be one of those people who are chained to his or her phone. It is still not placed on the dinner table and I do not carry it around with me as I walk around the house. 

However, I find the connection between me and my phone becoming stronger - almost like a tether line that is pulling me in. I still have enough distance to where I’m not obsessive about it, but I sure am more aware of whether or not it’s charged, its location, or whether that annoying sound of a text has arrived.

 Oops have to run. The text whistle just went off. TTYL (I’m so cool!)

and the tether line gets shorter…