I phoned this one in

By Drew Millard

I assume that in this day and age, the vast majority of all eight of my regular readers have mobile phones. This is good, because I’m about to write about them.

Looking at your cell-phone, you can easily see one way of communicating with people: through making a phone call. But what if you have bad news? What if you have to say something to someone but they’re too annoying to call? What if you’re in a situation where you are unable to call someone due to the noise level or a wish not to make a lot of noise?

That’s where text messages come in. A text message is exactly what it sounds like: it is a message of pure text that your cell phone can send and receive. If you look under your cell phone’s Menu, you should quickly be able to find something to select that says “messaging.” From there, you have reached your text message home, which is styled somewhat after the way email works. You are able to send and receive messages, which you type with your keypad by pressing the number that corresponds to the letter that it represents. Some phones even figure out what word you are trying to type, which can save you time and headaches.

Text messages are awesome. I say this because I have just recently begun a love affair with them. They’re a method of having low-grade communication with a person. Is someone annoying, and yet you still need to speak with them? Then send them a text message, so they can’t talk back unless they send you a text message in reply, which you can simply ignore. Communication made easy.

Text messages are quite neutral. I don’t think anyone has ever gotten more than either mildly excited or slightly annoyed to receive a text message, which means that “texting” is an excellent method to deal with information that is not quite important enough to warrant the intrusion that a phone call brings, but is still vital enough to demand instant communication.

I think that this concept can be best explained by letting you read a few of the latest text messages that I have sent:

1. I have no idea. I am currently craving a bagel.

2. Freeeeeepow!

3. You sadden us. Make money, make money.

4. Ingles or his brother BiLo.

5. Word.

6. Reno 911 the movie comes out next weekend. Yes.

7. Sweet.

8. I hope your grandfather is well.

9. I’m probably skipping the pep rally.

So as you can see, text messages are both fun and trivial, and function best within the constructs of correct and proper grammar without the use of conjunctions. Also, text messages allow you to be silly and get away with it, because none of my text messages have ever elicited the question, “Why did you just send me that?”

I guess this is more of an argument for the questionable sanity of my friends than an argument for the innocuousness of the text message as a greater whole, but whatever. You get the point.