Don't put words in my mouth or "even my phone punishes me for having fat fingers"

The thing that I find most amazing about texting with my I-Phone is not simply that I can do it, which is a miracle on so many levels.  Truly, it is a miracle both that there is a device I hold in my hand which will send a message to my sister deep in the woods and because I (the techno-challenged) have actually figured out how to do it.  Nonetheless, what stuns me is that my phone tries to figure out what word I'm typing as I type it.  Every text is like Wheel of Fortune as I start the letters of a new word l-i-t-e (it guesses "lie", then "little" and finally "literature")... and that is just the word I'm sending.  (Ok, so I don't send the word "literature" often, but you get the idea).

My niece has mastered this on a phone that does not give her a key board (something my I-phone has).  Like most texters she uses the numbers to somehow send a message and they get there...  ...and she knows just how to push a couple buttons so that the phone can guess what word she wants to send.  I am amazed.  Her texts are not only decipherable; they are coherent.

And so it is that late last night I received a message from my friend Schmi saying, "I'm dirty I didn't come to your show."

...then a follow-up message saying "OMG I mean sorry"

This kind of thing used to be called a freudian slip, and to be honest, had she been standing and talking with me saying aloud that she was dirty that she didn't come to my show (only to apologize that she meant sorry) , I'd have thought something along the freudian lines.

...but I know this, Schmi also has an I-phone.

You see the I-Phone will guess words as you are typing and if you don't tell it specifically that you don't want that word it will simply over-ride you.  One might think that with D being next to S Schmi typed D instead and I-Phone started looking for D-words, but that's far too simple an explanation.

It's really gremlins with a two-fold purpose.

Their first purpose is to completely humiliate us by sending words in messages that make no sense whatsoever.  Schmi caught her mistake - I never ever catch mine.  Most often when I text the receiver wonders, not that I have two masters, but that I even have all my marbles.  the classic response from Wolf is.  "Um what?"

The second part of their purpose is to lull us into a world where we do not have to talk to anyone.  I have friends with whom I chat regularly, but to whom I have not spoken in months.  They don't pick up the phone (answer), they retrieve my message and send a text. "Sorry you're so depressed, hope it's better soon"

On Saturday I received a text from my niece who was coming to my show.  She needed directions.  I started a text back and sent it both before it was finished and before it was proof-read.  So I started another text with directions and the most amazing thing occurred to me - I could actually call her and speak the directions - this method worked beautifully; she got lost, but that wasn't my fault.  

-silly