Back in the day, when I graduated from college, texting hadn’t yet caught on in the States. But it had in Italy, which was my first destination after commencement. There, I was introduced to the rather romantic, Italian art of texting, though a text was more frequently referred to as an SMS – pronounced along the lines of essemmesse. The Italians send lovely little love texts – full of big kisses (bacioni), quotes from romantic poets long dead, and cheesy lines like this one:
A volte mi chiedo dove abitino gli angeli, in aria, in cielo, o in terra? Non lo so, so solo che un angelo tiene adesso il proprio cellulare in mano.
And in English: Sometimes I wonder whether angels live in the air, the sky, or on land. That I don’t know: I only know that an angel currently has her cell phone in her hand.
I got that one from a guy I’d hung out with twice. I hadn’t been planning on a third time seeing as the chemistry just wasn’t there, but then I got this text…
While in Italy, I read an article in the Florence Metro paper that disparaged Britney for divorcing her beau by text but also pointed out that texting seemed to be encouraging Italian males in their early teens to be more affectionate and sweet, as it enabled them to send ‘thinking of you’ messages throughout the day and goodnight kisses at bedtime – sans too much effort or the teasing of their friends.
UK texts weren’t nearly as noteworthy, but for the fact that English boys (not huge verbal communicators to begin with) seem to think the advent of texting is indisputable proof that man was never intended to actually speak on the phone.
My faves from India were from a random guy I met in Calcutta, who had just applied for a passport so he could travel to America. We happened to share a birthday, and that sealed it – we were to be friends for life:
1+1 = 2 My eyes looking for U. 2+3 = 5 Sense missing for U. 5+2 = 7 Days thinking of U. 7+5 = 12 Month dreaming about U. 99 + 1 = 100 Years I need a sweet friend like you.
If lovers are like MOON then friends are like STARS and have you noticed that the sky can look beautiful with out MOON but not without *STAR*
To be fair, all of the above is recycled material. I’ve thought about it before, written about some of it before, etc. But what dusted the cobwebs off the topic of texting was a gem that a friend recently received.
Set the scene: Boy and girl date. Boy doesn’t want to date girl anymore. Boy too much of a pussy to break up with girl, so he acts like a jerk – distant, unemotional, irresponsive – until she breaks up with him. Some time passes, and boy moves to girl’s neighborhood (not on purpose, it’s a cool neighborhood, lots of people are moving there). Boy has a neighborhood-related question, and seeing as girl’s lived there for ages, perhaps she can help him out.
Boy texts girl: Hey would you be able to do me a favor?
Girl texts back: Really Dave, this is pushing it. Are you hurt? injured? If you need a kidney it’s out of the question. In short: favor unlikely.
1 day later…
Girl texts boy again: By the way, what was it?
People used to write, keep and cherish letters. We have a record of our emails, but when you’re 75, do you really envision yourself sifting online through the many thousand to re-read the particularly touching ones? I suppose the simple answer would be to print out the good stuff now to save you the trouble later, but I don’t have a printer, so that plan’s out the window. The point is – for the most part, we don’t have a record of our texts. I scribbled down a few from Italy on bits of paper and quickly found that bits of paper have a habit of going missing…
But fear not, anthropologists of the future, there are now a slew of websites that encourage users to aggregate their electronic comms by theme – I’ve mentioned textsfromlastnight before, but postcardsfromyomomma is also getting heaps of attention in the media. So I’m thinking it’s high time we get a site up and running for funny “break-up and its aftermath” texts. We may, lest we get too down, want to include the funny “falling in love” ones as well, for example: you are crazy beautiful you make me drool
Other amusing, indicative of our times, user-generated-content sites:
stuffwhitepeoplelike.com (oldie but goodie)
And, finally, on a completely unrelated note, I like this:
I once knew a girl 