Confession: I HATE talking on the phone.

Now when I was a teenager in the 80s, I talked on the phone–the CORDED phone–like it was my job. And it sort of was. Talking on the phone in the olden days was an event. Your multi-tasking-while-talking options were restricted by the radius of your cord. This is why there are still phones in some hotel bathrooms, kids. Yeah.

Also, if you didn’t get the party details from your friends before they went out for the night, you were out of luck. They might as well have evaporated into the ether. There were no mobile nor social forms of communications. You were destined to be green with jealousy the next day when your BFF called to tell you all about it, and then doomed to have that jealousy revived a week later when the photos were developed. Yes, developed from a film camera. There was waiting and anticipation.

Whew. Let me readjust my shawl and make a cup of tea before I proceed. Also, those blasted whipper-snappers need to get off of my lawn; they’re distracting me. Anyway, cordless and mobile technologies only strengthened my love for communication . . . until I hit medical school and the phone became my ball and chain. The beeper/phone call combo was a one-two punch that threatened my sanity on a nightly basis. Every call was a problem that exacted a portion of my soul. I’m not sure which took a greater toll: being called for a code or being called at three o’clock in the morning to see if someone could have Tylenol for a 100.5 degree fever.

Even though I left medicine behind, I never got over my aversion to the ringing phone. Ah, but technology marched on and the evil beeper was slayed by my knight in shining armor: texting.

Suddenly, mundane questions could be answered on the fly without turning into an hour long conversation. “Did you get your aunt a birthday gift?” ended with a typed “Yes, I got her a commemorative Elvis plate,” instead of morphing into a roundtable on bunions and the cost of pineapples.

Okay, hold it right there. Don’t go lecturing me about the the blah, blah, blah, human connection. There are only so many hours in the day and just five “meaningful” human connections can sap hours from your life.

Besides, if Billy’s question could only be answered by phone, he would have to wait a whole hour until your meeting was over to be told the dog’s fungal cream is on the shelf next to the leash in the laundry room, like always. And lucky for him, he gets spared the exasperated, sarcastic tone in your voice.

But sometimes it’s the missing tone that is texting’s pitfall. That and short answers that do no justice to the question asked. Full grown adults morph into surly, monosyllabic teenagers when faced with a keyboard . . . or maybe that is just Erin.

Due to one word answers to my very specific texts, she once punked me that her son was indeed playing soccer at my daughter’s high school and that I should drop what I was doing to bring her our contract to sign, never mind that I had already made four round trips to the school just that day. While I was wandering the fields in the back forty trying to find her–all the while texting her about her location–all I got was “Here.” It took an additional ten minutes for me to get enough of an answer out of her to realize she was at HER son’s high school, forty-five minutes away. When she finally clicked the phone to receive my actual call, let’s just say it went something like this: Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

So in honor of Erin’s superb texting skillz, emphasis on the “z,” here are the worst ways to answer texts in the affirmative in two words or less.

 

1. Okay

Remember when we talked about tone? I can’t read “okay” without it having a sarcastic edge in my head. Also, if you have asked more than one question, it never feels like all of them have been answered with just one “Okay.” But I’m willing to bear part of the blame because I’m fair like that. If there is one thing I have learned, it’s never to ask more than one question per text, because let’s face it, you’re lucky if you can get one answered. Don’t push it.

2. Kk

It definitely has a perkier vibe than “okay,” but what are you, twelve?

3. Great

Seriously it can’t just be me. Doesn’t it sound sarcastic? “Great” definitely needs an exclamation point after it to remove the implied eye roll.

4. Yeah

Once again, the lack of enthusiasm. If I have written a text that requires you to scroll twice to read it all, first, shame on me for writing anything that long, but secondly, shame on you for dissing me with an answer that bland.

5. Yes

How can I have problems with this? It is polite and succinct. Well, without more helpful words to elaborate, you don’t know if the “yes” means, “Yes indeedy, I’m at Your Neck of the Woods High School” or “Yes, I’m at a high school.”

So what IS acceptable? My favorite of late is “Got it.” It exudes positivity(!), understanding(!), and a general feeling of setting up camp and making s’mores on the same page as me. Also acceptable are “Boom,” “I agree,” and “You’re right!” I’ll also take “Your brilliance overwhelms me and I have never encountered a person more correct than you!!” Of course, that exceeds two words, but in this case I’ll make an exception.

But let’s get real, any text is better than you actually calling me. For the love of Verizon, don’t resort to that. Even with all of my complaints, I will take the muddy waters of texting over having my delicate sensibilities accosted by a ringing phone. Well, unless you have me wandering around a lonely, empty soccer field. But only then.

-Ellen

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