It all came to a head in Portland the day before TequilaCon. I was sitting in a bar with Brandon, waiting for Jessica and Jill to arrive, when suddenly my phone started vibrating. A missed call? But my phone was right there the whole time, and I hadn’t heard it ring. Odd, I thought.
I opened up the phone and immediately groaned, “Shit.”
“What? Was that Jill?” Brandon asked.
“I think so. Someone sent me a text message. Had to be Jill.”
“So is she on her way?”
“No idea. See… I don’t know how to get text messages on my phone.”
I felt like I had just confessed that I didn’t know how to read. Emotions boiled up inside me until I could feel my face getting warm. It was a combination of shame and fear, fueled by anger at a society and educational system that had failed me. People had tried to send me text messages in the past, and each time I would plead with them never to do it again because it took four people and half an hour to try to retrieve the message from my phone.
I called Jill and got her voice mail.
“Hey, Jill – it’s Jenny. I think you might have just text messaged me – if you did, can you call me back and tell me what it said? I… look, I can’t get text messages on my phone, okay? Call me and I’ll tell you how to get here – see you soon!”
I then left an identical message for Jessica, suspecting that she, too, would try to avoid using a phone for its intended purpose.
When they both finally arrived, we grabbed a booth and started to get an early jump on the pre-TequilaCon drinking. But before I even got a sip of my beer, Jill asked, “So what’s up with your non-text messaging phone?”
I pulled it out and shoved it toward Jessica and Jill.
“Go ahead. I dare you to try and figure out how to find Jill’s message. It can’t be done!”
They poked around for a while, trying to get to the message without having to attach my phone to a 1983 modem like in War Games and access AOL 4.0 dial-up, but ultimately settled for just mocking the sheer volume of my cell phone. Brandon called it a telegraph. Jill said it weighed more than her dog. Jessica marveled, “Oooh, look Jill! Jenny’s phone has a calculator built right in!”
They all let out a collective cackle.
I felt a tightness in my throat that reminded me of when I was taunted mercilessly by my classmates for wearing my Smurf watch to school in 6th grade, which was two grades too late for it to be cool.
Maybe it was an accident, maybe it was my subconscious trying to push me kicking and screaming into the 21st century, but shortly after I returned home from Portland, I realized that I had left my cell phone charger in the hotel room.
It was just the motivation I needed to force me to make a change. So the next week, I went to the Sprint store to pick out a new phone, and hovered around a couple of sleek looking models for a while before getting up the courage to ask for help.
The Sprint saleswoman walked over and started telling me all about mobile-to-mobile minutes and something about streaming ESPN, when I stopped her and asked, “But… does this send text messages?”
She gave me a puzzled look, as if I had just asked her to explain to me again how if I talk into the one end of this machine, someone on the other end would be able to actually hear my voice. Apparently, it’s pretty much impossible to find a phone these days that doesn’t allow you to text message. How was I to know?
My very first text message went to Jessica:
i got a new phone. r u happy now?
Within minutes, I received my first readable text message in return:
Woo hoo! Welcome to 2006.
I assumed the “2006” reference was Jessica’s subtle jab at my late-blooming discovery of texting, until a minute later I got another message:
Oops – 2007.
And there it was – my initiation. It was so much easier than I had imagined. I started out slowly – sending a quick, “running late. be there in 20 min” note to Natasha, or an “r u in for dinner? 8pm” query to Dee-Dee.
Soon enough, though, I was having full conversations with Seamus on the train as he sat on the upper level and I on the lower.
whatcha listenin’ 2?
mariah. any issues with that?
u poor thing. who’s making u listen 2 that?
now its chaka khan. rhythm controls me.
Sure, these were rudimentary conversations, but conversations nonetheless. I had progressed from the text messaging equivalent of grunts and snorts to composing simple sentences. I had discovered language.
But now that I’ve had this textual awakening, a new problem has arisen. I find that I’m starting to become less discriminating with who and when I text. I’m texting at home, texting on the train, texting at work. As soon as I figure out how, I’m going to text two people at once.
I should have known it was too good to be true. No one bothered to tell me about the risks and responsibilities that go along with being textually active. It’s fast, it’s easy, it’s what all the kids are doing. Did anyone bother to tell me that it would cost me $0.10 every time I sent or received a text message? Of course they didn’t, because they wanted to get me hooked first.
So now I’m just another text addict like the rest of them, typing out broken messages at all hours and staring at my phone, waiting for that red light to pop on, signaling my next fix. People say this is progress. I’m not so sure.
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