The Fine Art of Texting

By Mike Slosberg
May 28, 2009

Back in the ’70s, Tom Robbins’s novel, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, introduced his readers to Sissy Hankshaw, a young lady born with enormous thumbs.

I was reminded of Sissy the other morning at my local coffee shop. Waiting in line behind a bunch of teenagers yakking away, laughing, goofing around, and clutching cell phones in both hands, I was struck by their remarkable thumbs. Blurred digits, dancing across cell phone keys, at speeds approaching hummingbird wings.

Obviously, I was witness to an advanced form of text messaging. Darwin was correct. These children had taken the opposable thumb to a higher order.

One day, my old friend Rocco held out his cell phone, and blurted, “Take a look-see at this mess and please tell me what it says.”

“It’s a text message,” I answered, ever so haughtily.

“That’s just brilliant, Sherlock,” Rocco countered. “I know what it is, for crying out loud. I just can’t read the darn thing!”

I looked again and realized I couldn’t read the darn thing, either. Because right there, in front of my eyes, was a puzzling array of black uppercase letters that said:

THX BDAY 2G2BT. AAMOF UR CARD MADE ME LSHMBH. SWMBO WAS FUBAR WEN I WNTD A SLEEP O. BUT @TEOTD SHE CHILLED. TY, TY, GP. UCMU. XOXOXO TOY.

Here were familiar English letters, arranged in groups that looked a lot like word clusters, and yet I hadn’t the foggiest idea what they said.

“Pardon,” I said, leaning over the shoulder of the nearest teenager. “Do you, by any chance, speak text?”

The girl smiled. A pleasant aroma of fruity shampoo and Clearasil wafted toward me as she took the instrument.

“Oh, sure. Like no problem.” She read it with ease.

“Thanks. Birthday was too good to be true. As a matter of fact your card made me laugh so hard my belly hurt. She who must be obeyed was fouled up beyond all recognition when I wanted a sleep-over but at the end of the day she chilled. Thank you, thank you, Grandpa. You crack me up. Hugs and kisses hugs and kisses, hugs and kisses. Thinking of you.”

And I thought: Good Lord! Two revelations in one day: First, that thumbs have risen out of the muck and taken wing as a major tool for communicating, and that gibberish has become a mainstream language.

But, as in all evolution, there was a piper to be paid. Thumbs and gibberish could possibly become a technological membrane, standing between Rocco and his granddaughter.

Wait, I thought. Didn’t every generation have its own version of texting – those little quirks of communication, embraced by the young, which mystified and irritated their elders? Whether it was ancient glyphs etched on tomb walls, Beatnik vocabulary, or rap lyrics, the objective was clear: Fool the big people!

Texting is simply the latest obfuscation, filtered through two intersecting realities: technology and universal laziness, creating a brevity code where thoughts can be squeezed into short monograms.

But as I eventually discovered, texting isn’t mysterious. And even though thumbs attached to older bodies can’t move as fast, it’s a cinch to master.

The important point is this: Texting puts you at the side of your grandchild, 24/7. Once you get over the initial fear of mastering this new lingua franca, TXT MSGING turns out to be as simple to pick up as pig Latin.

Just think of acronyms and abbreviations. We all know what ASAP means, right? And FYI? And etc. Texting uses lots of them. Like LOL, for laughing out loud (it could also mean lots of love, so be careful with that one). And B4N, for bye for now.

Start with something simple yet exquisitely guilt-inducing, such as: DRLG, Y DNT U CALL ME? It will blow your little darling’s mind to deal with Grandpa via text, and you’re likely to get a quicker reply than if you merely called that same phone. She’ll also brag to her friends about how cool you are.

And, more important, to paraphrase Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca, “This could be the beginning of a beautiful texting friendship.”

Source: Grandparents