No Txts 4 U

In general I am a slow-to-adapt person. You'll never find me on the cutting edge of technology or fashion or pop culture or anything else, really. I guess I have to see something around me for years before I get comfortable (or even interested) enough to try it out. So texting has been something that I have avoided for a long time. For one, I get charged for every one. For two, it's something I usually saw teenagers doing, and that in itself was enough to put me off.

However, even the most reluctant-to-adapt person can get dragged into the fray.

I'm still in the dark ages when it comes to cell phones. I like my basic cell. In fact, I searched quite hard when I got this last one to find one that didn't have all the fancy features. No smartphones for me. Internet on my phone? Yeah right. I don't even have a downloaded ringtone, for pity's sake. But even still, I have found myself actually having to text on occasion. My primary president texts me when she needs something and one of my piano moms does nothing but text. Even Terence now occasionally texts me on the job. So like many other areas of my life, you think I would slowly but surely be warming up to it. Especially since texting someone can get me out of having to make a phone call, something I avoid like the plague.

It's not happening. I don't like texting at all. It's the grammar that bothers me. If I am going to type something out to someone, I want all the words fully written out and spelled correctly. It also drives me nuts if I don't have capitals and punctuation when I need them. As a result, typing a short text on my non-qwerty cell can take me ten minutes. It's just in my blood, I guess. Grammar does matter to me.

Now, I'm not saying that I read my friends' emails or blogs or Facebook posts and growl at their grammar. But for myself, I have to have things written as correctly as possible, or it drives me nuts. I guess I'm anal that way.

In the interest of full disclosure though, I must tell you that when I see something that is supposed to be formal or professional, it does affect my opinion of the writer if the grammar is not appropriate to the situation. This morning I read a defense of the recent immigration bill by one of the Arizona senators that was riddled with run-on sentences and punctuation errors. Quite frankly, it made me wonder if she should be in the state legislature. Look, if you are supposed to be competent enough to read and vote on bills written in legal jargon, you should be intelligent enough to at least have someone proofread something you are releasing to the public, even if you don't have the faintest clue about grammar yourself. (It's just an "s" or "es" to make a word plural in almost every case, lady! Illegals, not illegal's!)

All right, I'll admit it. I can be a grammar nazi. So I guess that means texting will probably never catch on with me. Oh well. By the time I got it figured out, we'd probably be on to some new way of communicating anyway.