Text Messaging Annoyance

I recently had to get a new cell phone after three years. I didn’t have the text-messaging service turned on with my last phone, and it’s not on this one, either. I’ve heard all the reasons why people from age 5 to 95 love text messaging: it’s nice to pop off a note without bothering the recipient (who may be in labor or at work or school), it’s quicker and easier than e-mail to ask your husband to pick up some milk on his way home from work, you can call your boss an idiot during a meeting without him/her even knowing it!

Here are my crazy reasons for hating text messaging:

1. It’s rude. I hate having a conversation with someone and hearing their phone jingle or sing or vibrate or … bark. The message beckons to them, and they get all jittery and anxious until you give them permission to read it.

2. It’s addictive. I love when the text-message receiver grasps their phone like it’s a life raft, as if they simply have to know who has texted them the super-intelligent item such as, “LOL” or “What are you wearing?” or “I’m so bored.” Watch your teen try to live without texting for one day … it’ll be fun!

3. It makes it too easy to have an affair. Just read messages from your lover under the table and respond when you can. Your spouse never has to know. It’s a stretch, but I contend that texting is contributing to the delinquency of human beings in general.

4. It’s why my hairdresser didn’t give me the !@#$ cut I asked for. Instead of listening to me, she was texting her next client. Later she kept stopping in the middle of my blow-dry to text again. See #1.

5. Wouldn’t you think texting makes it easy to cheat on tests? Teachers have it bad these days … they have so many devices to compete with, as if teaching isn’t hard enough. How do you take away 30 cell phones at the start of each hour, then give them all back as the kids leave? Or do you just get tired of the whole thing and try to ignore it while the kids are setting up sex dates via text message?

6. It’s expensive. Just ask my cousin, who ran up several hundred dollars’ worth of text messages once before getting the unlimited texting option.

7. Driving while texting and “sexting”. Enough said.

The next time you start to text, consider how potentially inane your message really is. It’s just one more technological “breakthrough” that has become a pain in the thumbs.

I’m so curious to see what Paul has to say about this since he’s practicing just “being” … doesn’t texting get annoying to him when he’s trying to meditate or get or give a massage? Or is he polite and just turns off his phone for hours at a time? And if he turns off his phone, what’s the point of even having text-messaging? Isn’t the point of it the urgency? Let's all text him right now. His number is 555-555-5555.