I wasn’t going to do this so soon after my post praising emails, but then again, I most certainly send more text messages than emails, so I wouldn’t want to leave them out. They are so little and helpless, it would be wrong to suggest they aren’t just as capable and perhaps more useful than the email. But you might not realize it, given their generally on-the-fly composition and limited space capacities.

For those of you cool enough to possess a phone that allows you to send emails, you may neglect the poor text message as a pointlessly restricted tool you only use with your hopelessly flawed friends and colleagues who don’t yet have a smart phone. But I contend that the text message is not limited, but an art form, of sorts. While unlimited texting packages really eliminate the need to express yourself in 145 characters, I still enjoy the challenge.  {Note: I know not one thing about Twitter but I suspect there are some similarities in the limited character counts, etc…} I love editing as a general rule, but there is something really empowering about taking a 200 character message and whittling it down to the requisite 145 character mark. If I can express an emotion, a concern and make plans in that limited space, I feel I have really accomplished something (though this may say more about the state of my ego that I consider this to be an accomplishment…).

Not to mention that it’s even more instantaneous communication than email is. I can’t think of anybody who doesn’t have a cellular phone – and of all of those people, a vast majority of them carry their phones with them everywhere…on vacation, in the hospital, to the bathroom… always connected. Emails are a little riskier in that case – you probably aren’t going to be able to reach your friend who got run over by a psychotic cyclist and is laid up in the hospital via email. Granted, she may have a cool phone… but maybe not! And texts are a sure-fire method of reaching said victim of attempted Cyclocide.

Before 9 this morning, I’d sent three text messages. It would have been more if the recipients had responded, but one of them has just had a baby, one is on medical leave from work and lives in the boonies where reception is touch-and-go, and the third was Hubby, who actually did respond with “ok” – and really there’s not much to say back to that. I don’t imagine Hubby has much appreciation for texting as an art form – we recently found that I am incapable of staying within a limited number of text messages per month. Come on! What does he expect? I can text my Mom now. Texts are glorious indeed!