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
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