Don’t text me, call me

Michael Abrahams, Online Columnist

In my childhood, commonly referred to as ‘the dark ages’, if you wanted to communicate with persons in real time, you would call them on the telephone. Nowadays, with the advent of the cell phone, the preferred methods of communication for many appear to be texting and messaging. These have the advantages of empowering you with the freedom to converse at your own pace, giving you time to choose your words carefully before releasing them, and allowing you to multitask and engage in multiple conversations simultaneously.

Texting and messaging, however, do have their drawbacks and annoyances. For example, sometimes the multitasking mechanism breaks down and messages are sent to the wrong person in error, which can be highly entertaining, or embarrassing, depending on whether you are the sender or the recipient. You get a message like "Yu bringing Durex or Trojan babes?" followed by "Oops. Wrong person. Sorry", accompanied by an embarrassed face.
Or you send a message like "I love you so much Sandra" and get a reply like "AND WHO THE HELL IS SANDRA???!!!" accompanied by an angry face, because you accidentally sent the message to Carlene, whose birthday, incidentally, you forgot last week. #epicfail

As for the texting jargon, I am still trying to keep up. Sometimes I am not sure if certain people are using appropriate abbreviations or if they simply suck at spelling. Of course, in Jamaica, we just had to construct our own, such as kmt (kiss mi teet), dwl (dead wid laaf), and dwrcl, which I think means ‘dead wid Roman Catholic liturgy’. Please correct me if I am wrong in the comment box below.

Texting can be hazardous to your health, though. Research has shown that driving while texting is six times more dangerous than driving while intoxicated, and texting while walking accidents are also on the rise. As for texting while ‘sexing’, that may just be the most dangerous of all for you to engage in, depending on the upper-body strength of your partner and the proximity of a cutlass to their dominant hand. I mean, who wants to know that their amorous gyrations are being upstaged by a small, hand-held battery operated vibrating device? (Remember, I'm talking about a phone.)

And what's up with these broadcast messages? Especially the religious ones? Some of them are so gosh-darn annoying, telling me that if I do not pass them on, it means that I do not love God and I am on the highway to Hell. Someone made the mistake of sending me a broadcast message that began with "Jesus asked me to speak to you today ...", to which I responded, "Why didn't Jesus contact me himself? He has my PIN. DUH!" For some reason, she stopped sending me messages after that, and I never heard from Jesus either, so I suspect that she was lying.

And status messages. Why do some women people feel the need to let all of their contacts know when they are ticked off with their men? If they want to throw words, why don't they focus and aim properly instead of scattering their vitriol for all their contacts to see? Messages like "A REAL man knows a REAL woman's worth", all this alongside a profile pic of the slighted woman in FALSE hair and FALSE eyelashes. (smh)

One of the problems with messaging and texting is that the art of conversation is gradually falling by the wayside. With texting, tone, mood and vocal inflections are not appreciated. Call me old-fashioned, but I think that some conversations should definitely be face to face, or at least via verbal communication. Like break-ups. I think it’s kind of tacky to end a relationship with text messages, but it does happen. I have never actually seen it myself, but it probably goes like this:

Woman: Honey, when u flew out from New York the other day, u rocked my world
Man: LOL
Woman: But after u left, I missed my period
Man: OMG
Woman: So I did a pregnancy test
Man: KMT
Woman: And it is positive
Man: WTF
Woman: So, can you send me some $$$ to help with my medical bills?
Man: TTYL

Me: ROTFL

Dr Michael Abrahams is a gynaecologist and obstetrician, comedian and poet. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com or michabe_1999@hotmail.com, or tweet him @mikeyabrahams.