From Joanie:
Most of my text communication with Michael is logistics-- the wheres and whens of every day life that once upon a time had to be arranged by telephone (horror of horrors), and had to be neatly arranged beforehand, holdups and running late be [expletive deleted]!
Luckily, with texts, we can be aware of the comings and goings of one another in real time, along with comical updates of things and astute observations of people as we do things like: wait in line at the post office, head to the store, walk to and from the subway, leave a meeting, go to a meeting, surreptitiously text during a meeting, etc.
I still occasionally text Michael when he's gone to the bathroom at a restaurant or amusement park or something. Only when I feel he's been gone too long and I'm no longer feeling like I can entertain myself, even with the vastness of the interwebs in my hands.
I usually text him something along the lines of "Did you fall in?" or "Are you dead?"
Most often, I hear the ding of his phone just a second later and he is standing right behind me.
Sometimes, though, he isn't right there and hasn't texted me back, so I assume he's been murdered or run away with some young hot thing (and yes, I'm aware that I am a young hot thing, my insecurities are not the topic of this post).
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| Proof that I am a hot young thing. |
So Michael gets home seconds later and I hug him for not being dead and scold him for not keeping me updated on his arrival when he is on a train underground with no service and not gallivanting with the aforementioned unknown hot young thing.
Whatever did we do before smartphones?
But the words we most use in our texts are the simple announcement: on my way.
Personally I am a fan of the early texting version--the one where it was done one handed, with numbers, not a keyboard, and was just three letters: OMW.
Those three letters needn't convey the urgency of getting the [expletive deleted] out of a bad work day, or the elation at seeing one another at the 99 cent pizza place in a few minutes, or even that we can be expected home in 20 minutes or less, so now is an appropriate time to get dinner started.
Those letters were just the announcement and we could tack on emotional baggage when we got home.
Then came autocorrect, the scourge of #firstworldproblems.
Autocorrect changed my OMW to "On my way!" with its incessantly chipper exclamation point at the end.
Now, I'm a lover of unnecessary exclamation points, and you can determine my mood for the day and/or how much I like you by how many superfluous exclamation points appear after "happy birthday" on Facebook.
But I want it to be up to ME when they are used.
I went so far as to remove it from the Iphone shortcuts, so now it is just "on my way" with no exclamation point and no way to read into it.
Michael will just have to wait till I get home.