THE ANCIENT ART OF PHONE CALLING part 2

     Basically, text messaging was created to make sure kids kept spending money during school days. Think about it. It's a simple fact that phone companies made less money when teenage girls weren't talking on the phone. This included all the hours they spent trapped in classrooms.  With texting, they could contact each other in different rows or in different classrooms without the teacher even knowing. What teenage girl or boy with at least a few friends and some social standing wouldn't want to text and be texted. It's the modern, high-tech version of note-passing. And it was the perfect way for the phone companies to finally infiltrate the classroom and anywhere else that children and adults couldn't, or didn't want to, talk freely on their phones.
     But not even the creators of text messaging imagined the impact it was going to have on how the world communicates. It's gone more global than global warming. Texting was only supposed to to be an adjunct to phone calls. It was not supposed to drive people away from phone calling.
    We are witnessing, no less creating, a paradigm shift in communication that is undoing what the telephone, in all its glory for 130 years has so amazingly given us--the gift of having conversations and hearing each others' voices.  It rewards us  in all the ways that 'LOL' and :) , and the more dramatic, heart-felt  :(  never do. The spontaneous roar of laughter, the perfectly timed retort, the drawl of sarcasm, the all-telling pregnant pause, the silent stand-off,  the sniffle of a hidden cry, the romanticism of not hanging up first, the quirky nuances of our voices along with the inflections and tones we use that in an instant convey exactly how we want something to be understood, are all being thrown overboard.
   We are willingly abandoning a level of communication we have come to expect from each other and are now prepared to accept much less. Phone calling does not seem to be part of the modern plan, even though the telephone was one of the most modern inventions of all-time.  It was the greatest thrill of the twentieth century.  Thousands of people lined the streets just to use one of the few on display for the first time in the 1870's. And the ritual continued when the phone arrived in every new country, then in every new city, then in every new village for decade after decade. People lined up because they wanted to talk.  There are Indigenous people in remote regions who are still only now being introduced to the phone for the first time. Some don't even have a written language. The question is how long  after they develop  one will they be texting instead of talking? Is it some kind of evolutionary process that we first crave talking on the phone then we come to hate it?  Now we do whatever it takes not to speak on the phone. We've gone from a society that talked to each other for almost a century and a half to a society that wants to only text each other, all  in a matter of a few years.  Why have we latched onto this so quickly and so easily? Have we always been this desperate not to talk to each other?
   I've been trying to go back and think when and how it all started happening. Early texting was as  innocent as an address, a phone number, confirming plans, an  arrival time.  It was also a great, quick way to let people know that plans had changed. But then we realized we could cancel plans with a text too, and how much easier and less guilty it felt not having to fully explain ourselves or hear the disappointment in the friend's voice over the phone. Soon after, people were using texts to avoid anything that an actual conversation would have made more unpleasant or awkward. Consolidating one's thoughts and feelings onto a small screen using a vocabulary of lettered abbreviations has a great appeal for those who think talking on the phone has turned into more of a commitment that they generally want to make. Its the most some people are willing to be available for. Texting allows us to be as disengaged as we want to be while still remaining in contact with each other. It's like contacting your neighbor across the street but doing it with hand-held signs and binoculars to read them. These days, when you do get a phone call from someone it feels like a grand gesture.  We are using text messages in so many ways now that I can't help but wonder how the rules are regarding what still must be said over the phone and not by text. Is there anything? People I know have been broken-up via text, have received death notifications of a grandmother and of a cat, have been turned down for a job, have been notified of cancer, have been told by a birth mother that she is changing her mind and keeping her baby,  and have been informed to get checked for Syphilis ( that unfortunately was a text I got ).
   It's gotten to the point that we're even allowed to argue using texting. My good friend and his boyfriend just had a week long argument texting each other back and forth from their individual apartments. First of all,unless two people text at the same speed, one person is going to be answering the first point while the other person is already on to the second point. Rebuttals that made sense when they were being typed arrive at the wrong time and confuse things even more. These guys kept getting more and more frustrated as they flung texts but neither of them would pick up the phone and call. Since the beginning of their relationship, all their contact when they weren't in the same place was through texts, so they had no practice in how to speak with each other over the phone.
    This is becoming the case more and more. And the younger the person, the bigger the role texting plays. Now, young kids growing up with texting don't even consider making a phone call an option. They usually have to be forced to speak on it, and its almost always to older relatives. The ones I feel most sorry for are the grandparents out there who got totally blindsided by their grandchildren switching from the phone to the text. It's created a huge generation gap, even bigger than the computer did. With arthritic fingers, worsening hearing and a life-long attachment to phone calling, many grandparents don't want to learn a whole new way of communicating at their age. Unfortunately, this might mean that they'll have less contact with their grandchildren. But, on the positive side, if most of the older grandparents out there now refuse to text, no one has to worry about them hitting the wrong key and by accident sending their entire family 'sexting' messages with pics attached.
    I know there's no way for me to stop this texting phenomenon from happening. People all around are trying to suck me into the texting abyss. So far, I've given in only to one close friend, and that's only because his hatred of  phone conversations predates texting ( you know who you are).  I've been able to hold off almost everyone else but I can feel the levee isn't going to hold up much longer. I'm going to just have to adapt a little. It's not that I am totally opposed to it. I text sometimes, and even enjoy it when they're playful. But there are the other times that I am as guilty as anyone else in using texting to suit my purposes. Yes, I admit it! I know exactly when I've done it and why I've done it. It's not easy for me to do but sometimes it must be done. There are people in this world who I always want to talk to, and there are people in this world who I want to talk to sometimes, and there are a few  people in this world who I don't want to talk to at all. Oh that reminds me, I have to go and text my mother.