Reasons why I should not be allowed to text:
1) I'm just slow.
In the beginning of my texting career, I would get a text from one of my children, and then while trying to respond, I would get another text asking if I was there. And then another asking if I was going to respond. But, you know, to see what the new messages were, I would have to exit the message I was working on, and then re-find it again, thus doubling or tripling my already lagging response time.
I soon figured out that it was faster just to start another text.
(I'm pretty sure my extensive draft folder is most of the reason my phone has the response time of a retail cashier on Dec 23rd.)
I knew I'd really taken a looong lonnng time (in teen years) if I ever got the phone call. Seriously, my kids would rather bite off their own fingers than call me in front of their friends.
"MOM WHERE ARE YOU!?" - urgently whispered into the receiver means I have been incredibly slow, and they needed to know if they could get permission for the whatever thing within a reasonable 27 seconds or so after they sent the text.
2) Apparently, I don't know when I'm insulting people.
See, to try to improve my response time, I changed my tactic to the One Word Answer. Here's a little tip for you. The One Word Answer,in some texting circles, is thought of as the highest of insults .
"Your mom said "YES"? Wow. That's cold, man."
3) My word predictor is insane and does NOT predict words that actual people would use in a sentence. On the up side though, I think I have finally trained it to predict the word "quesadilla" instead of "question" when I type "ques". In case you were wondering, I did that by adding the word quesadilla to the end of every text I sent over about 3 weeks time.
4) My keyboard is so tiny, that even if I DO mostly get the words right, I rarely get all the spaces. For some reason, I am much more likely to get a . (period) or no space at all, thus making the word predictor even crazier than usual.
5) I have completely given up on using punctuation on purpose. It takes too long to access an apostrophe, anyway. Remember - - we're on a timer here, and
youre gong toknow what im sying anyway. Punctuation that happens on accident is just a bonus.
* this one drives Mimi crazy enough that she will actually text back corrections.
6) And finally, I never really look at what I've texted until it is in "send" mode, at which point it is too late to call it back. Fortunately, most people are willing to interpret my texts - sort of like a first grade teacher reads her students papers. For example, I sent this one recently -
"Hey! if there areatill plums on the free you should bring some.ome"
Which obviously was supposed to be
"Hey! If there are still plums on the tree, you should bring some home!"
Here's how my family would handle that text:
The Brain would probably not see it because he keeps his phone on silent.
Mimi would text back corrections.
Brandon would text back "if there areatill plums on the free, I'm etng tem."
Lizzie would txt back "lol... I don't get it."
Hannah actually brought plums home.
So if my name ever pops up in your inbox, it's not that I'm trying to be insulting or cryptic, you've just got to remember that the emphasis is on speed, not accuracy. I know that you'll eventually figure it out, or just ignore it and frankly, I've decided to be ok with either one.
quesadilla.
