txt the address i’ll cu l8r

I am a reticent text messager. I don’t like awaiting a response without knowing that the recipient has seen the message or even has their cell turned on. I almost never get a meaningful answer to texted questions. What am I to do but follow up with another message: “Did you get my text?” I wind up calling anyway.

Making plans with text messages is the worst. It’s like playing a game when no one knows whose turn it is; a cross between ping pong and 20 Questions. Want to hang out? Yeah, okay. What do you want to do? I don’t know, what do you want to do? I don’t care. Where are you now? If it’s such a challenge to coordinate a social life, and I know that it is, why add this obstacle?

I’d rather get together just to do the apathetic thing. Let’s keep each other company while we writhe with ambivalence, wrestle pent up energy and fend off fatigue. What do you feel like doing? I don’t care; what do you feel like doing? I don’t know; ask me again in ten minutes.

In New Zealand, the hot cellular promotion was free text messaging on weekends. From Friday evening to Monday morning, pre-paying wireless customers (the vast, vast majority) could send as many pub addresses, estimated times of arrival, pick-up lines and where r u‘s as they could type. Which was a lot. The weekend timing was perfect. I just keep hoping that U.S. wireless companies will give in and give up a similar deal.

And until they do, I’m going to hold out. I save texting for especially opportune situations. Because I know as soon as I really get into it, I’ll be a goner; I won’t be able to stop. I’ll communicate only in 160-character phrases and expect every word processor to guess the word I’m typing and fill in the end of it for me.

I will enthuse that text messages are a fantastic medium for one-liners. If I were willing to pay for an unlimited texting plan (which I’m not, and that’s why relentless text messages irritate me so—twenty cents to send or receive!), I would use it to shoot quick messages to friends, just to say hi (plus a little).

These are messages I would have sent today if I could have sent them for free:

To: Caitlin
Do we need 1,000 drinking straws? Four colors only $4.99!

To: Jonathan
Coming to see your new place. I don’t have a housewarming gift but do you need any drinking straws?

To: Amy
I know I said I didn’t like Leona Lewis but now I keep listening keep keep listening to this song

To: Jimmy
My parents are sending my car to DC with my little brother. He better not take the Mount Holyoke sticker off the back window.

To: Will
You better not take that Mount Holyoke sticker off my car!

To: Rachel
Just passed that Thai place with the purple logo and the weird bathroom sink. Take-out or gym? Take-out or gym?

To: Chelsea
Remember when we used to ‘smoke’ invisible cigarettes to ‘calm’ our ‘nerves’? Have fun tonight!

To: Doug
So, you never told me your marathon time

To: Bridget (except Bridget doesn’t text at all ever)
Did you know that the Harry Potter Lexicon guy is “vilified” and cast out from the HP society??

And now, I think I have some phone calls to make.

Further reading:

Other New Yorkers gripe about Evites and texts in “Blame the Messager,” Alexandra Jacobs’ etiquette column in the May 4th issue of TMagazine. She quotes another Emily White (no relation).

Anand Giridharadasa looks at textiquette and social evolution in Mumbai: Flirting by Text Message, Indians Test Social Limits

2 comments on “txt the address i’ll cu l8r

  1. I almost took that sticker off. I washed and cleaned the car entirely, but I left it there….. for now!

  2. i would have taken drinking straws.

Comments are closed.