cold hard cash

The twenty they gave me had writing on it. The bank gave it to me. I didn't notice until an hour later, about to buy coffee.  You've seen this sort of thing. A phone number or a website. This had both. Normally I pay it no mind and use the bill as I would any other. Not this time. I transferred the twenty to my right pocket, the pocket reserved, superstitiously, for savings or safekeeping or temporary non-use. Later on, in the late afternoon, I texted the number on the bill, not knowing if it was a landline or a cell. I texted, "Hey there." I got no answer. I got no answer for weeks. In fact, I said what the hell and forgot about the whole thing. Out of the blue, I get a "hey there." I don't respond to numbers I don't know. Who was this? I soon realized it was a reply to my original message of same. Part of the same thread. 

Can I help you?
I don't need any help. Who are you?
Who are you?
Au contraire. 
Exactly.
What do you want?
Same as you.
Are you male or female?
What's it to you?
Where are you?
Same.
What does that mean?
How 'bout you?
Same.
Want to meet? Someplace neutral.
Beige.
Why should we?
I'm afraid.
Why did you do that?
Do what?
Write your number on the twenty.
What are you talking about? I didn't leave no number.
Any.
What?
Never mind.
Meet?
You crazy?
Course not. And if I am, what's that make you?
Crazier.
Right.
Left.
Don't text me again.
Me neither.
Same.
Same.

he said she said they said it said

[insert smartphone text notification sound after each entry below, as appropriate, or inappropriate: piano tinkling, bell chime, shotgun, thunder, guitar twang, lion's roar, fart, burp, post-orgasmic sigh, trumpet blare, car horn, alarm, jet roar . . . ]

Dad: where are you?

Mom: hey, you.

Girlfriend: wyd

Friend A: 'sup?

Brother: hi there

Dad: frown emoji

Ex-gf from 1986: Where ya been all my life?

Sister:  where've you been today

Friend B: wtf

Girlfriend: wya

Friend C: wanna hang out

Ex-gf from 2015: Netflix n chill?

Girlfriend: whats your problem

Sprint: your bill is available online

Other brother: you got 20 bux till tmrw???

Friend C: hey, can I borrow like 20$

Mom: hello????!!???

Girlfriend now ex-gf: fuck offfuck you, you fuk and I'm pregnant

Dad: do you have the keys to the Mustang?

Ex-gf from 2018: I had your baby did you know dat

Friend A: u alive?

Ex-gf from 2015: Im in Kazakhstan dickface

Sister: u no i luv you dontcha

Mrs. Rivers, 7th grade English teacher: it's a gerund; know it now!

National Grid: your bill is overdue. your power will be cut off . . .  

Sister Mary Aloysius Gonzaga de Porres: that's a mortal sin

Dad: HELLO?

Brother: are you coming over now or not?

Dr. Ozcomert: are you breathing?

John Angleterre, boss:  Please be advised your position, and you in that position, have been terminated. Do not enter the premises under any circumstances under pain of arrest.

Sister: g'night love you talk tmrw

Private Number: Your appointment with Probation has been canceled. Please be advised it would be prudent if you were to assume a new name and Social Security number. Leave town now. Better yet, if you have a passport, leave the country. STAT.  

txtng 1-2-3

Sometimes I feel texting, talking on a cellphone, all that, means I am communicating less. Sometimes I feel silence is the greatest message. But is it a cold silence or a warm one? And yet texting leaves an imprint. The 21st century human stain. Even so, a good impression or not? How to discern? How to tell?

reflextns on txtng2

It happens. After all, who wants to use more thumbstrokes? Who wants to slow down the effluvial ephemera of quotidian trivia? The "it" I refer to above -- an "it" typed without its antecedent -- is the shortening, the abbreviating, the consequent depunctuation of texting.

I do it.

I've done it.

Both with and without guilt.

I'll not do "it" when I want to be pedantic, when I want to prove a point to the recipient that I'm either not uneducated or that I was an English major or that I do not subscribe to the vulgar laziness of texting, the habits of stark simplicity.

But other times I do subscribe to minimalist fervor, an icon of the age.

And linguistically we know that language inexorably grows, organically, toward simplicity, as a sign of its sophistication!

So, when I text I sometimes will say to myself, hey, the question mark was obvious just by the phrasing, it couldn't be anything but a question. or I mutter to self that periods commas or semicolons are just getting in the way course they no wot i mean who needs caps either its all undrstd txtng is fun after all japanse grls hv wrttn txt novels etc no end pt

Texting.

Txtng

Just some thoughts.

txtng txtng123

OMG LOL CU L8TR!

I have an ambivalent history and relationship with texting. First the brief history:

• Until recently, our plan was such that each text was charged, something like thirty-five cents. This was because of the need to text primarily to Europe.
• With so-called unlimited texting now as part of our plan (of course, texting is paid for, but in lump sum), I more readily send and receive texts.
• I say "more readily," but I am not an agile texter, don't care to be, and my nearly obsolete phone does not facilitate rapid texting.
• I accept and enjoy the simplicity of texting when I want a very brief exchange -- the same way that a screened message on an old-fashioned answering machine can be both convenient and diplomatic. And it saves time.
  
• I recognize that texting is lousy at conveying tone.
• Texting can also be a total waste of time.
  
• K?

Now let's talk briefly about the diction and language of texting:

• I am neither a scold nor one who is afraid of changes in the language. Language has always been dynamic, including its spelling conventions. English is enriched by slang and other revitalizing influences.
• I have read that Japanese young women have written best-selling novels as texts.
• WOW!
• I have heard that text diction is becoming acceptable in student essays. My view? Not so good. Wrong context. There's a time to wear fancy clothes and a time for grunge. Same with language.
• As a poet, I like the forced minimalism of texting. You are really driven to cut to the chase, to be telegraphically stark -- not just with wording but also with punctuation. In that sense, it can make you a better self-editor: "I did not need that many words. I certainly did not need such a highfalutin word."
• But, alas, let us not forgot that just as simpler-than-Hemingway texting has its place so does serpentine and garrulous prose, with qualifiers and asides -- like this! -- as practiced by Proust, Joyce, [note serial comma] Kierkegaard or Faulkner, and that such florid and meandering prose -- which would be hard on one's thumbs -- paints more than thumbnail sketches: more like an intricate pointilism or a broad canvas of curvilinear strokes, dialogue, [note serial comma again] and nuanced depiction, fiction or not.
  

SUMTHNG 4 SOME1 TO THNK ABT

p.s. Although texting while driving will make you or others a post-factum postscript, many people persist in doing it, thinking, "I CN HNDLE IT."

Driven to Distraction (i.e., Distinction)

Holy mother of mackerels!

I tried this interactive texting-while-driving video game at The New York Times website and almost jumped out my second-floor window it was so frustrating:

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/07/19/technology/20090719-driving-game.html?hp

I don't know if the game will work for you if you're not registered with nytimes.com (easy to do), but let me tell you. It's great to be old. Meaning: texting and driving is not on my radar screen, or in my toolkit, or part of my skill set. Not anytime soon.

Yikes!