Texting is really strange when you think about it. Just yesterday I was standing in line at a store, and there was a group of four or five teenagers in front of me. I just stood there watching them because every single one of them was talking to the others, but at the same time, having text conversations with other people. They didn’t skip a beat either, it was like their brains were completely split in half, and they liked it, as if that is normal. I guess I do the same thing really, only for me, I send more tweets than I do texts.
I remember before the days of my iPhone, I had an Android phone with a QWERTY keyboard. On that ancient badboy, I could type without even looking down. If I was bored at dinner, I could just put my phone under the table and secretly type away to whomever I wanted. Opps… Mom, if you read this, I never did that when you were talking to me, honest. *wink*
Times change though, and now I have a 10-year-old son who likes to text. He asked me the other day to explain the popular text symbols (i.e. emoticons and acronyms) to him. Have you ever tried to explain those to a child? I think it would be easier to explain French literature or advanced calculus. It really made me realize for the first time how completely ridiculous some of those symbols are.
Caldwell Tanner at College Humor recently created this little graphic that shows what we text vs. what he sees. This is cute. If I had made this list, I would have also included about ten more I can think of also which make absolutely no sense. Maybe that is why texting can be so much fun, it’s just plain silly. :)
Header Image Credit: [University of Nebraska Omaha]
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