Technologically Texting Terri

[Technologically Texting Terri would be a terrible name for a children's book. It'd be the kind of book you get with your Taco Bell kid's meal-- those books they gave away last year were horrible.]

I read a blurb for a movie the other day. The movie is set in 1994– which, the blurb noted, was the last year before cell phones became ubiquitious. Huh. Keegan, the Younger Niece, was born that year. I was married that year. It puts things in perspective. It’s only been a Keegan since we could drive 10 minutes away from home without panicking that we were out of touch with our loved ones. Good times, those carefree, unconnected years.

Recently we updated our mobile phones. We’d had small flip phones that had a few little bells and whistles– I could play “Bejeweled” (albeit just the demo because we never shelled out for the whole game) and I’d managed to download two ringtones– “A Kiss at the End of the Rainbow (theme from A Mighty Wind)” and “All for me Grog.” We didn’t have cameras, we didn’t text. In fact– when we’d get a text we’d have a small panic at how much it might be costing us. On a scale of 1 to 10 we were comfortably in the middle– far enough from the Jitterbug crowd but also from the carpal tunnel afflicted thumb set.

I’m still old fashioned enough (or is it just polite?) to find table texting more than a little rude. There are exceptions– I was with some pals a couple of weeks ago and, while we waited for our food, we concocted a few silly sight gags to snap with their camera phones and send to farther flung friends. But I’ve also sat at a table wondering why it was a grown person couldn’t set their phone aside long enough to carry on a non-interrupted conversation. (It’s not like I was dining with a heart surgeon or the British Prime Minister.) I can set aside my 3 year old– you can put down your stupid phone!

We’ve kicked around the idea of updating our phones– we’re on a family plan with my mother and her phone was woefully unable to hold its charge any longer. Mine had been dropped a few times. And Robby’s was just really old. Robby scoured up some new phones for us and a plan that allows us to text, too. (At first he had us down for “100 texts a month” until he figured out that my nieces do that in the average 48 hour period.) Our new phones have more bells and whistles. I can play the demo version of Tetris now… but, so far, just the annoying at&t ringtones. We’ve spent enough money for a while.

My nieces, incidentally, are one of the reasons we upgraded. It’s how they communicate. For them email is just too slow and IMs aren’t convenient unless they’re at the computer– so texting is their favored mode.

Texting is fun– and it’s convenient in a “Don’t wake up my sleeping toddler” kind of way. Still– I vow here and now not to be one of those people that abandon all pretense of punctuation and the use of actual words. And there are places that texting is off-off limits. Theaters, church, and the bathroom all jump to mind.

The camera, we decided, paid for itself when we were gassing up the car last night and saw a man gassing up his car wearing a Speedo and a t-shirt. Thank goodness we could snap proof.