Text messaging

I am not good at text messaging. I like to blame my lack of skills on the fact that the top left button on my cell phone broke about a year ago. While seemingly unimportant, this button serves the not-too-essential purposes of saving phone numbers and to sending text messages. Since my two-year contract isn’t up and I’m not about to cough up two hundred dollars on a new phone, I’ve spent the last year text message free while everyone else has become extremely efficient at typing on a tiny cell phone keyboard.

Tonight, my brother-in-law called and left me a message that he left his money clip in my car. Deciding to get a little text messaging practice, I borrowed my husband’s cell phone and send a text to my brother-in-law. It took me about 20 minutes to type my message on the too-small keys, “You can have your clip back but I’m keeping all of the money”. I chuckled at my wit (remember, I’m new at this) and proudly pressed send. A few seconds later, the screen flashed “Message Sent to Patrick”. My heart sunk. My brother-in-law’s name is Peter. I had sent the not-so-witty message to my husband’s boss.

Needless to say, my husband wasn’t amused by the situation (although I personally think it was a tiny bit funny). I have been officially banned from text messaging, which means that I will not be the mother who is savvy enough to text her son to say that she’s on her way to pick him up from school. I will use good old-fashioned email to arrange play dates. My kids will probably groan at my technological incompetence. At least I have something to blame it on. I’ll be able to tell the story of that pesky little top left cell phone button that broke right at the peak of text messaging and how I was just never able to recover.