Textual Healing?

I have a close friend who is dating someone new. They are both rather smitten with each other, and everything is perfect, except for one thing. He's a texter, not a caller. All she wants is one phone call a day, but the precedent has been set: They communicate only through text message.

In junior high school, we passed notes, danced arm's lengths away from each other, whispered, giggled, played MASH to decide our fates, and ultimately, someone, somewhere, ended up making out.

In high school, things became slightly more sophisticated. People had pagers, so if you really liked someone you could send them a page. 143 meant "I love you," 911 meant "I need you urgently," and so on and so forth. Not to mention, the rampant use of three way. Three way calling. (Get your minds out of the gutter. Geesh.) Three way calling meant two girls could call one boy, but only one girl would talk. The other sat in her bedroom somewhere, pressing mute and just listening. The talking girl would ask the boy who he liked, of course hoping to discover it was the girl pushing mute. If not, well, then, life went on.

In college, it was the beginning of rampant, instantaneous communication. Those who are local might remember makeoutclub. (Maybe it wasn't just local, but I seem to recall it was a Boston thing.) It still exists now but has really beefed up it's aesthetic. Back in the day, it was just pages upon pages of uncategorized profile synopses. Black background, small pictures, brief information detailing likes and dislikes, and a screen name. This is how boys who went to punk/indie/emo shows found girls who went to punk/indie/emo shows, and vice versa.

Of course, once located on makeoutclub, the boy and girl would talk via instant messenger (which, later in it's progression would be referred to much more succinctly as AIM). Instant messaging was the next phase in relationship communication, or relationication. (I just made that up and yet my spell checker seems to be complying. I'm just gonna go with it.)

Now, once out of college, as all of my friends are now, we are considered - according to most - young adults. Which, of course, means we have hit the age requirement to identify ourselves as "adults," but we have yet to reach the responsibility quotient that would then relieve us of our "young" qualifier.

So, what now? How do boys and girls - er - I mean men and women, communicate now? How does one young adult talk to another young adult? Well, we text message of course.

Somehow, the cyclical tides of relationication have brought us right back to passing notes in junior high, paging 143, and instant messaging - except now it's all contained in a handheld device that comes along wherever we go. Our relationication skills apparently peaked at three way calling, and have plummeted ever since. At least then we were (deceptively) speaking to one another using (I assume) proper English. Now it's "where you @?" or "@ work. sup?" or even "k.ttyl8r" What is that?

We don't speak, we email. We don't call, we text. We don't meet for coffee, we facebook.

What happens to us when saying what we feel is restricted by a 160 letter count? Are we more concise or do we just omit things in favor of saving space? Are we saving face at the same time?

I have another friend who was once broken up with via text message. A text message. A break up text message. I mean, really. I'm no fan of breaking hearts, and I do it with the utmost passivity, but that's just a little uncouth, don't you think? Txt me l8r & let me kno.

-k.