Talk To Me

You ever get a text from someone and you wonder why they don't just call? If you have you're probably someone born in the last century. The 20th.
   I'm a man 'of a certain age' which means that I don't have a whole lot of friends who use text messages. It's not that they don't know how, they're all smart guys, it's that they would really rather not. There's a bland impersonality to a text message that puts off people like me. Time was not everyone in the world was connected with a cell phone. We even had to carry change for a pay phone, believe it or not, in case of emergencies.
   I remember when I was growing up, everyone in my family just sort of stopped answering the phone. At least when my sister was in the house, because chances were very good any incoming call would be for her, and if she was indoors she would certainly be the first to get to the phone. Which you couldn't carry with you back then, and was usually hung on the wall in the kitchen in most homes. Our one family phone was practically glued to my sister's head for years as she carried on with her friends.
   But engaging in all that talking built relationships. My sister is still best friends with her best friend from middle school and high school, and I think those insanely long phone conversations had a whole lot to do with that.
   I was sitting on the couch next to one of my nieces the other day, and she was carrying on a text 'conversation' with one or several of her friends on her phone. This is not the same thing as talking on the phone, you can't hear the other person, the sighs of exasperation, the nervous giggle, the angry tones. Typing is not conversing. And, while she's halfway engaged with her friends via text, she's halfway engaged with the other people in the same room with her. Arguably worse than a sullen teen who just disappears into her room
   I read an article the other day that stated kids these days* prefer the safety and relative anonymity of a text message over the immediacy and intimacy of a phone conversation. They feel actually talking to someone reveals too much of themselves. This is the same generation who thinks nothing of posting drunk frat-party photos online for all the world to see and enjoy for decades to come. A nip-slip or dropped trou in living color is okay to share, but a phone call is too intimate. I can't figure that one out.
   I wonder if people said the same thing about the phone when it started going into homes? 'You know, if you want to talk to me, you can just come over.'

* I love saying that, it makes me seem like my grandfather