I love text messaging. I love it so much that I wore down the buttons on my phone to tiny nubs. I love texting so much that it is my preferred method of communication with everyone. If you want to get a hold of me, text me, otherwise I am not going to know what you want. In past months my text messaging has averaged well over 200 text messages a day. If texting were a person, I would marry them, regardless of sex. Now that you understand my love of texting, we can discuss the correct usage of such a technology. Here are the rules I follow when texting my friends/family/pastor/children ect. While they may not work for everyone, they do work for me.

1. Text messages are static. If you text message someone, they WILL receive it. This means you don’t need to follow up the text message with another text. They will see it and if they want to reply, they will. If they don’t want to reply, perhaps you should pick up the phone, send them an email, or text someone else. 2. Once you send it, its gone. Do you remember the feature in emails where you could retrieve an email as long as the reader had not yet opened it? Not so with text messages, unfortunately. Once you press send, you have sent the message and no matter what happens, chances are the word is out. 3. You never know who is on the other end. Yes, you sent it to someones phone, but do you know what that someone is doing right now? Perhaps they left their phone at their grandmas house and she had a heart attack after receiving a picture text of your ass. Perhaps the person on the other end has a spouse that accidently switches phones, are they going to want the ass picture? What about a pre-teen fiddling with their parents phone in church? Be careful what you send, you never know who is looking or what they are doing when they get it. 4. Be specific. Text messages should be short, to the point, and relatively benign in nature. Dont dish out secrets, dont gossip, dont drag on like it is story time. Get to the point and make it snappy.
5. Make it worth my time. If I send you a text saying “Ill be there in 1 hour” please dont send me a text saying OK. This is a worthless message and causes me to check my phone for basically no purpose at all. Okay see you soon! or something like that is different, I know that you got the message because I sent it to you, please dont feel like you need to reassure me. 6. Don’t text message someone you don’t know. Messages can get through, but alot of the time when you are dealing with a new aquaintence things can easily be misconstrued. A lot of people do not understand my humor and because of that I can really grate peoples nerves. I don’t text message someone unless I really trust them and know them well enough to know if they get my sarcasm. 7. Like OMG Lolz. Your texting style speaks volumes to your intelligence. Use this medium to accurately portray your IQ. 8. May I have your hand in text? Verify that the person on the other end can A: accept text messages on their phone B: Are able to communicate in this manner and C: that they don’t mind being randomly bothered at all hours of the day and night. Be polite, some people dont like to text message and some people don’t know how. Feel free to slap these people. 9. Dont text and Talk. When you are texting during a conversation you are having, BOTH people will know that they are not being paid attention to. Be available to the people in your life first, text your friends when they get up to go to the bathroom. 10. Texting isnt for relationships. Your boyfriend doesnt care that “Octomom fired Gloria, OMG!!” he may try to act like he cares what you are doing every second of your day, but he doesnt. Save the texting for your girlfriends and use it only when absolutely necessary like “Im standing on your front stoop in nothing but a trenchcoat.” Never FIGHT over text messages. Never, ever, ever, ever. 11. Don’t Menage-text. Texting duplicate people at the same time is a disaster waiting to happen. Trust me on this one, and if you don’t want to trust me, go ahead and ask the person who received one of my sex-texts in the middle of a conversation about custody. Oops. Shut up, Im a multi-tasker. Do you text message?
Tell me your worst texting story.

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