R U rdy 2 tlk?

I had an entire conversation with my sister today via text message. She was working and I was sitting at yet another football practice. And, sadly, it’s the longest conversation we’ve had in months. I’m trying to be more “tech savvy”, which I’m not--as evidenced by my vanilla-ish blog that is constantly plagued by technical problems. I hear people make lots of money off their blogs—I just don’t know any of those people. Still I try not to be a dinosaur although I was recently told by my teenager that I carry a “smart phone,” and I had no idea what that meant. Apparently I can get email and browse the web on my smart phone for a mere $40 more per month. I’m already not a great driver so I have spared my fair city the pain of having another driver on the road making a left turn while trying to pull up Mapquest on their phone. Plus it will be a cold day in hell before my cell phone company gets another dime out of me—I’m sure you can all relate.


But I have a confession to make about texting. I don’t understand the language. My sister and I managed fine because we’re both text illiterate and we typed out everything without a single abbreviation in the mix except for the :) , but that’s been around since PacMan.

I’ve been working with a lady who is decades younger than me and she sends me emails that I can’t begin to read. Words are so misspelled that I need the Rosetta Stone to translate. “I” is never capitalized and punctuation is permanently on vacation. I strain, I re-read several times trying to figure out what she’s asking me and I respond by making complete guesses—much like communicating with a pre-verbal toddler, I think I know what she wants but I could be way off. Sometimes the emails arrive IN ALL CAPITALS!!! with lots of question marks and exclamation points and I wonder what I did to deserve being yelled at.

I understand our desire for the shortcut. It feels like the world is spinning at a faster pace and we scramble to keep up. But this dinosaur thinks that we’re losing something very important—our ability to actually communicate. I hate to list blogs as evidence since I’m an addicted blogger, but I’m also a reader and I’m shocked at the number of posts out there that are impossible to read. They’re confusing, they fail to proofread or even run a simple spell check, and they’re plagued with run-on sentences.

I just hate to see the written word crumble into a bunch of abbreviations and shortcuts. And so, while I did enjoy catching up with my sister today, I’m going to make a point to actually call her. I’m also going to pick up a book by an author who labored for months or even years to produce a dazzling story and I’m going to read it. It’s my little contribution to the dream that great words and great storytellers live on.