How would you like to get a text that reads, “hopw wash ur donut”? Or “chuck urine box”? Would you worry about me? Would you think I finally went over the edge? Well, don’t. Those messages are only two examples of how bad I am at text messaging. (By the way, the correct translation of the two texts are ‘How was your dinner,’ and ‘Check your inbox.’)
It’s actually quite hilarious what my phone comes up with when I text someone. Especially if I am walking while texting. I am not the most coordinated of women, but darn it, I am a good speller! But a text to my friends Kim and Pam, meant to say, “Diner dinner Tuesday?” can appear as “Dumber Dumber Tisdat?” Or to my eldest son Georgie, asking him about his soccer game: “So hopw wasp teh suzzer gsane?”
See if you can translate the following text: So hwy is it taht a rekztivery imtwllogwbt woman cas’t nansafe to text coddecrly werhoit the FBI thnjinh I am wrofung in cise? How did you do? Here is the correct text: So why is it that a relatively intelligent woman cannot manage to text someone correctly without the FBI thinking I am writing in code?
The keyboard on my phone is so small that my fat fingers cannot text properly. I touch the T and I hit the Y. I touch the C and get the X. Try texting “in a sec” and hit the X instead of the C, and see what response YOU get.
I watch my sons texting. They are so fast, it’s unbelievable. They even use two hands to text. To say I use the “hunt and peck” method of texting is being generous. I was using a feature called “Swype” for awhile, but I wasn’t very good at that, either.
I know that they make little penlike styluses for clumsy, fat-fingered people to use, but that is not helpful to someone who loses the actual phone at least once a day. So I did some research and I came up with a solution. I got an iPhone. I got one for my husband George, too.
My iPhone is a wonderful thing. It types what I am saying into a text message! This saves me from typing it myself and also allows me to ramble on and on if I want. (Ask my family. This is a common occurrence.) I text a lot, so this feature will be very helpful. I think.
The only trouble is if I sneeze or cough while I am speaking. The sneeze is recorded as “I chew.” The cough doesn’t register, thank God. But the dog barking in the background registered as I was texting my friend Sharon this morning. It came up as “aaaawoooo, aaaawooo.” Imagine getting THAT text.
Now I find myself holding up my phone close to my face, and enunciating very carefully so that I don’t have to go back and correct my spoken text. I also find myself speaking very loudly with little to no inflection in my voice, so that I sound a lot like that talking car named Kitt in the old “Knight Rider” TV show. Needless to say, I will not be using the Voice Text tool in public.
The first few texts I did using the voice feature had no punctuation. This is annoying to me. Unpunctuated stuff makes me crazy. It’s like nails on a chalkboard to me. So I experimented. I pressed the little microphone button and said, “I like cats period.” And lo and behold! It typed correctly. I went back and said, “I like cats comma,” and it put the comma in! I tried, with a little trepidation, “I like cats colon.” Thank God it worked properly or that would have just been weird.
My youngest son Donnie showed me how to use something called FaceTime also. I scared the living daylights out of my husband George by trying THAT last night. I will not, however, be using that feature much. VERY unflattering.
So, text me sometime. I’ll answer you, correct punctuation and spelling and all.
Ilene Black has been a resident of Ewing for most of her life and lives across the street from her childhood home. She and her husband, George, have two sons, Georgie, 32, and Donnie, 28. A licensed soccer coach, Black was the long-time head of the boys’ travel soccer program in Ewing and ran the township’s annual Labor Day Soccer Tournament for several years. She is the creator and moderator of a Facebook group called, “You Know You’re a Ewingite When…,” which has more than 1,000 members.
