The text message

If you are married, please do me a favor and look over at your significant other and say "thank GOD I am not dating anyone in this day and age."

Do it...do it now.

No, not that half ass way with the little pat you just gave him.  Really look him/her in the eye and say "Holy shit...if you had any idea what single people have to deal with these days.....I would jump off a bridge."

It dawned on me that many of my friends who are married have no idea what its like to be single now.  Gone are the days of dashing to the phone when it rang, hoping that it was him.  Gone are the days of getting that one phone call at night where he asked you how your day was.  Adios to the "I will call you when I get there's" and the "call me when you get home's"  No....now we are strictly at the mercy of ....

the Text message.

In talking to a few friends of mine this week, we got into the discussion of dating and texting.  How our relationships have evolved into having a pen pal rather then a boyfriend.  How we analyze EVERY text we send and even the ones we don't send.  How we can be sitting back in the in the most relaxing scenario, but always have one hand on our phones in the event that familiar little "buzz" shows up attached with a text message.  You pick up your phone, butterflies starting to rev in your stomach "Ooh, I hope it's him"  and then you find out its from your dad "don't forget its your mom's birthday tomorrow"   Sigh..."yes dad."  You should be able to color code your text message notifications by color.

Green-family
Red-ex husband
yellow-work
soothing lavender - the man of your dreams.

this would really help my heart out if this could happen.  That way, when I hear the little "ding" or feel the little vibration, I can pick up the phone, see the color coded "Red" number one, and know that its just my ex husband.  SKIP....Piece of cake.

Now, when you get the text, the one that says "hey, how's your day?"  You think any of the following.

 oh, he's thinking of me.

 ok, what do I say back

 Should I wait a while to reply?  If I reply now, then I just look like I am sitting by my phone waiting for his call.  If I wait too long, he may find someone else on his way to the parking garage and I MISSED my opportunity.

If I reply back "good, how is your day?"  Do I seem uninterested?  Ok, delete.. (backspace backspace backspace)  Day is good, how is your day?"  No...that seems really generic.  I want to be flirty but not too flirty.  How 'bout optimistic response..." AWESOME...how about you?"  No....nobody needs to capitalize anything in a text message.  Also, you sound like you should be standing in front of an auditorium full of people selling your self help book.  Tone it down a notch there sister.

You sit there and start to send your little message.  After about five attempts at it, you sit back and read it again....and again.....and then you do it....(SEND)

And you wait.
And wait.
And then you wait some more.
And you go back and look at it and reread it.  "I probably shouldn't have put that in there.  Wow, what did that sentence mean?  Oh crap, he's going to think I am crazy."  Because you see, there is no voice to put behind that text.  There is no intonation in your voice to show if you are joking or being serious.  Have you ever had someone send you a reply to a text that says OK?  It is really confusing, does it mean "ok, no worries?"  Or does it mean, "OK!!!  GOD!!! WTF???"  Or does it mean. "enter sarcastic voice here "Ohhhhh Kayyyyy"  

You have no way of attaching any type of emotion to your text messages.  You are left to stare at his comment to you and just enter your own.  And if you are having a bad day or you are a little insecure, then you are left with this "enter emotion here" moment.  You have nobody to tell you any different.

And so you share the text with your friends, because there is always room for a second opinion.  There is always room for someone else to help stand on your pile of insecurities and say "yeah, I'm not sure about that one."  If you have good friends like I do, then they do a lot of the "no, he likes you...see?  He sent this and then look at this one.  He's TOTALLY into you."

This goes on during the entire beginning of the relationship.  The text message analysis that could get you a spot on CSI.  You are two messages away from sitting behind a desk in a lab coat answering to the name of "Sully" and saying things like "you gotta see this."

I really miss the days where you were able to lie on your bed, with the phone cord wrapped around your fingers, legs kicked up against the wall, feet outlining the corners of your Duran Duran poster.  I miss the days of being able to talk to someone and have that connection.  Those of you that are in a relationship and have been for the last 10 plus years will never know what this is like.  You will hear us say things like "well we didn't TALK last night, but we texted for about an hour."  You will cock your head to the right like a dog when it hears the word "walk" and look at us with a silent stare.  Yes, this is what life is like now.  This is what we do.  We are able to go back and re-live every moment of our conversations with this person, able to hand our phones over to our girlfriends after they say "well what did he say? "  Your friend grasps your phone after you say "here...start here."  She reads and you pray for an "awe" moment from her or a "oh, that is really sweet, he is totally into you."

Yes...be thankful.  Be very thankful that you don't have to deal with this crap all the time.  The constant second guessing world that us single people live in.  The ongoing "should I text him-should I not-why hasn't he messaged me-what does he think of me-" bull shit we have to deal with.

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