My wife was in one of those all-day work meetings the other day, but she took a break to give me a quick call on my cell phone.
I was driving when my cell phone rang and when it did, it scared the Limbaugh out of me and almost made me run off the road. Actually, my cell phone didn’t ring, it sang. My wife likes to program my cell phone so songs that I can’t understand play whenever she calls me. I’m not sure what the name is of the song that plays when my wife calls me now, because I can’t understand what the alleged singer is saying. My 11-year-old daughter tells me the song is called “Kiss Me Through the Phone.”
“Well, that’s sort of creepy,” I said when Emma told me the name of the song.
“You’re telling me,” is what Emma said.
The only good thing about having a creepy “song” play on my cell phone every time my wife calls me is that I usually answer it very quickly to make the song stop. When the song started playing in my car the other day, I answered it very quickly. My wife told me that she was going back into her meeting, but that she was going to send me a text detailing our options for scheduling a meeting with some folks in the very near future.
“If I text you, will you be able to text me back?” my wife asked.
Part of me wanted to be insulted by what my wife said. I mean, I’m not a moron, (well, I don’t think I’m a moron) so obviously I should be able to figure out how to text my wife in response to a text from her.
“Of course I can text you back,” I said, not really sure if I could.
A few minutes later, my wife texted me but since, as I said, I’m not a moron, I didn’t try to read the text while I was driving. The main reason I didn’t try to read the text while I was driving was because I didn’t want to run into a telephone pole. The other reason I didn’t try to read the text while I was driving was because I wasn’t sure I knew how to read the text.
When I got to work I figured out how to read the text. It was quite long. In the text, my wife offered up two different meeting dates and times. With each date she included detailed explanations as to why the date was or wasn’t the date we should pick. At the end of the text, which ran several paragraphs, she offered up her suggested date.
I texted “OK” back. It only took me 10 minutes.
My wife texted backed immediately. This text also ran several paragraphs. My wife is to texting what (Caution: English major reference ahead) Herman Melville is to fish stories. In her text, my wife told me that she would e-mail the people we were to meet with and schedule the meeting. She also wrote that she would text me later to let me know that the meeting was indeed a go.
I texted “OK” back. This time it only took me five minutes.
My wife texted back immediately. She asked me, in her text, how Emma’s dental appointment, which I had taken her to earlier in the day, had gone.
I texted “OK” back. It only took me about three minutes.
My wife texted back immediately. She asked me, in her text, if I could text anything else besides “OK.”
I texted “Yes” back. That one took me 10 minutes again.
When it comes to texting, I’m your basic Calvin Coolidge.
But the fact that I am texting, I think, says a lot about my attempts to enter the 21st century.
Not only am I texting one- and two-syllable words, I am also reading tweets. Both the Missouri Southern men’s and women’s basketball teams post tweets on their Web pages. I like to check out how the teams are doing, so I read them. The great thing about tweets is that they don’t take much time to read. I don’t know how long they take to tweet and I’m pretty sure I don’t want to know, but I don’t mind reading them.
I read somewhere that our Congress creatures have taken to tweeting when they should be ... oh, I don’t know ... be doing something about health care or accepting more money from lobbyists. So I’m thinking that tweeting can’t be that difficult.
So maybe I’ll try my fingers at tweeting some time. Of course, I’ll have to go out and buy a tweeter or whatever they call those tweet machines but, when I do, I’ll be all set to tweet my first tweet. And I already know what I’m going to tweet.
“OK,” is what I’ll tweet.
Local News
Mike Pound: Texting conquered; next up, tweeting
- Local News
-
-
Mo. Legislature officially ends its 2012 session
Missouri's annual legislative session has officially come to a close.
-
Strong to severe storms forecast for Joplin region
Storms developing across the central and southern plains this afternoon are expected to migrate into the Joplin region this evening.
-
Economic-development strategies posed for Joplin region
More than 30 people shared ideas Wednesday on ways to promote economic development in the seven counties that are participating in the Joplin Regional Prosperity Initiative.
-
Kansas primary filing deadline near
Kansas candidates have until noon Friday for file for county offices in the Aug. 7 primary.
-
Date set to reintroduce rare beetle in Missouri
An endangered species of beetle will be reintroduced in southwest Missouri on June 5.
-
Senators: Missouri River flooding unifying moment
Two U.S. senators who symbolize disagreements between upstream and downstream states over management of the Missouri River say last year’s historic flooding was a unifying moment.
-
First-ever electricity for parts of India
The solar power company SunEdison is launching a program to get electricity for the first time to more than two dozen villages in India.
-
Couple 'scoop out' ice cream business from the past
When 3-year-old Brynlee Rabel tried coconut ice cream for the first time Tuesday, it was love at first taste. “She got the vanilla, but when she tasted my coconut ice cream she had to have it,” said Kayleigh Daugherty, a Joplin resident who wanted Brynlee to share the same experience she had as a little girl when she visited Anderson’s Ice Cream.
-
Missouri National Guard releases records involving soldiers who looted from Wal-Mart
The Missouri National Guard has released records confirming that four soldiers were disciplined for taking merchandise from the ruins of a Wal-Mart store in Joplin one day after the tornado that devastated the city a year ago.
-
Joplin school board awards contract to complete demolition of JHS
The Joplin Board of Education on Tuesday night accepted a bid for finishing tornado-related demolition at the high school.
- More Local News Headlines
-
Mo. Legislature officially ends its 2012 session


