I’m not the best at responding to text messages in a timely manner. I’m terrible, actually. It’s an art form. Instead, I am that person—the one who lets text messages marinate for days on end. Weeks, months even. I don’t think I’m using the term “ghosting” correctly, because that lingo came of existence too many years removed from “gnarly,” but I’m not ghosting you. There is no ill intent behind what I do. I’m just bad at tapping out a reply within a culturally accepted timeframe, whatever that timeframe may be. I know I’m not the only one.
My Friend Dwayne
My friend Dwayne never responds to my texts. I don’t hold it against him. I envy him. If there’s one friend I have who truly appears to not give a single, flying fudge pop about technology, it’s Dwayne. It’s possible he responds to other people’s texts. I have no clue.
But it’s like seeing a meteor bolt across the sky or a Fifth Avenue candy bar in a convenience store (where the hell are you my beloved Fifth Avenue?) when Dwayne replies. I can’t believe my own two eyes at what I’m seeing: did Dwayne just respond?
“Check this out Allison! Dwayne responded to a text.”
But usually he doesn’t. But then I’ll see him six months or a year later and he’ll say, “That text you sent last January had me rolling.”
It’s possible I am to other friends what Dwayne is to me: the guy who rarely, if ever, responds to their text messages. I don’t take it personally when Dwayne doesn’t respond (it’s Dwayne) and you shouldn’t either when I don’t respond to you. My lack of a response has nothing to do with you. There’s a simple reason behind this.
My Phone Is Apart from Me, Not a Part of Me
My phone isn’t an appendage to my body. I don’t walk around with it in my hand. I don’t keep it in my pants pocket. It doesn’t sit on my desk staring back at me like the black rectangle-shaped rabbit hole it is. Unless I’m traveling somewhere, my phone isn’t even physically on me. It lives in a dresser drawer resting on top of my underwear. My clean underwear, of course. Socks, too. I keep them together. I do this because I don’t want my phone, the miniature pocket super-computer that it is, stealing away my precious time.
Time, after all, is one of those things you can never get back. When it’s gone, it’s gone. There’s not a day that goes by where I sit in reflection as dusk fades to black and say to myself, “I wish I had spent more time on my phone today.” My phone in the dresser drawer is my self-imposed escape from the endless scrolling of the world wide web.
I view my phone as a lithium-powered vampire of sorts, sucking the life out of me minute by minute if I’m not careful. The Santanico Pandemonium of tech, but less sexy. I’m self-aware enough at this point in my existence to know I have to be mindful of distractions—and the modern phone is one of the biggest distractions of them all. I’m as susceptible as anyone: young child, teen, young adult, exhausted parent, contemporary grandparent.
It’s true I own a laptop and could use it in much the same way as my phone — except I don’t. My laptop serves a defined purpose: namely, writing. During the daytime, it’s more or less a really nice typewriter with a built-in public library where I can research topics I write about. Late at night, I do, admittedly, use it as a distraction device.
Because: thoughts.
My thoughts aren’t a fan of turning off even though my pineal gland is busy doing its job secreting melatonin, silently screaming its proverbial scream, “Hey, buddy! Lights out! It’s bedtime here.” So in comes my laptop’s glowing screen until I get so tired I can’t keep my eyes open any longer.
Also: I have an old dog. She’s sixteen and has sundowners, which means my dog Motzie’s sleep cycle is disrupted because of canine dementia. When it’s bedtime for us humans, she’s wide awake, pacing, barking, and full of anxiety. So I stay up for as long as I can to care for her and try to calm her until my body doth protest and I fall asleep. While I’m awake, and in between her restlessness, I watch NBA highlights on my laptop.
The truth is I’d like to hear from my friends more. I miss that whole communication and catching up thing we once did. Seeing each other in person. Bulls—ting about nothing in particular. I’d even be okay with texting back and forth with my friends, occasionally. Not too much, but a little. The problem, and the reality, however, is they are as bad at this as I am.
Is it because we grew up during a time when life moved slower? When having to wait wasn’t seen as a hassle or cardinal sin and patience was upheld as a virtue? When “see you later” meant just that?
An Analog Life, or: I’ll See You When I See You
I’ll see ya’ when I see ya’, boss.
Bobby from Delta Force (1986)
Growing up in the 1980s and ’90s, life was analog by default. Just as there was no crying in baseball, to quote the drunken Tom Hanks character in A League of Their Own, there was no instantaneous response expected from a text message — because texting didn’t exist.
If you wanted to talk to someone, and they weren’t in your physical space at that precise moment in time, you could, hypothetically, pick up the phone. You probably didn’t though. You’d just see ’em when you’d see ’em. If they were long distance, and that was nearly everyone outside a 15-mile radius of your residence, you’d definitely just see ’em when you’d see ’em.
I never talked to my grandparents in Old Well by phone growing up because that conversation costed money. Cold, hard cash. Despite being eight miles away, their phone number started with a 376 and that conflicted with a 542 in terms of local vs long distance. My dad would just be like, “Get in the truck. We’re going to Old Well to say hello,” even though the gas expenditure likely costed more than the phone call.
But even if your old buddy, old pal was local, and you chose to pick up the telephone, and all its ten ft. long tangled cord glory, you knew the person you were trying to reach probably wasn’t going to answer. Their mom, standing in the family kitchen where every telephone known to mankind was fastened to the wall, would answer and she’d say, “He’s not here.”
She wouldn’t offer to relay a message nor would you offer one up in the first place because you’d see your friend when you’d see ’em. And if you called someone’s house and they didn’t answer? You didn’t take it personally. You just hung up the phone and went about your day.
Because of Hollywood and RadioShack, I’m aware answering machines existed in my childhood. There was always a scene, every other movie that debuted, where a giddy newlywed couple who’d just moved in together is shown recording a combined greeting on their answering machine. About fifty minutes into the movie, they had broken up and the greeting was now a depressing reminder. That is, until the ultimate resolution where there would be a nod the broken up couple was now back together again and they are getting ready to get their swerve on before the movie fades to black. But I didn’t know anyone with an answering machine growing up. Not a one.
There was no leaving a message. They either answered the phone or they didn’t—and usually, they didn’t. Nowadays we leave messages left and right. Not on voicemail, of course, unless you’re a spam caller or my mom. We leave them via text.
And because we do this, we’ve created this cultural expectation to always be available at a moment’s notice—and I’m not cut out for that type of world. I live in it, but I’m not good at it. I long for an era like my childhood when being unreachable was a normal part of life and not a character flaw.
Texting Etiquette, Or: Is There an Expiration Date on Politeness?
Sometimes I open a text message, then get caught up in life (usually of the parenting variety), and forget to respond. Then I forget that I forgot to respond and now I’m standing at this awkward crossroads in modernity:
- Do I respond now, days later, as if I received the text message a mere five minutes earlier?
- Do I wait even longer until they text me again a month from now?
- Or, do I not reply at all because too much time has passed?
What the correct answer is, I don’t know. What is proper text messaging etiquette and is there an expiration date on politeness?
So, I let it linger. Because you have to, you have to, you have to, you have to let it linger. Sorry. Cranberries reference.
That’s what happens when someone texts me usually. I let it linger. Minutes tick by. Then the minutes stretch into hours. Then the hours turn into days, then weeks—and yet, I still haven’t responded. I know I should rip off the Band-Aid, but somehow, the idea of texting back has now turned into this anxiety-inducing task of monumental proportions.
A text message of all things.
A reply to a stinking text message.
I think about responding, “Sorry. Just now saw this,” which in itself is often true. But there’s a level of dishonesty in taking this route. Because at some point, when I did open my underwear and sock drawer hours later and saw your message, I still chose not to respond immediately. I felt like too much time had elapsed or I was about to do something else and whatever it was you sent me earlier in the day was not of prime importance to me in my life in that moment. It’s not personal.
I’m a parent so whatever I was doing likely related to them. Or I was spending time with my wife because, again: I’m a parent, so whatever time we can squeeze in together as husband and wife, we do. Or I was on a deadline to finish writing something so that took precedent. Or I needed to tend to my dog because, as I mentioned before, she’s old and has needs absent in caring for a younger dog.
Then I forgot about your text.
I know I should reply, right? And my friends who I text should respond to my texts, too, when it’s convenient for them, but we don’t. It kinda feels like a guy thing. Do girls do this? I know there are people who exist in life that intentionally don’t respond because they are being a-holes, but what about people who don’t respond and there’s no ill intent behind it whatsoever?
Because that’s me and, I’m pretty sure, most of my friends.
I do, I should add, have guy friends who seemingly love to text. But they are few and far between. They are like rare birds existing in the wild we thought long ago extinct.
Wow, look at ’em soaring out there, succeeding in modern times. Stunning.
They’d probably swim to the front of the modern dating pool like Michael Phelps with their text messaging prowess. All the ladies would be like, “Wow, look at all those Read Receipts and blue bubbles on him.”
The Modern Love Affair with Texting
I’ve noticed texting being incorporated into modern movies lately—usually romantic comedies (rom-coms). I like rom-coms, my wife likes rom-coms, and I’ve given up trying to convince her to watch Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds with me. It’s a futile request.
Rom-coms involve love and dating, obviously. Which got me thinking about modern dating. On the one hand, if I were twenty to twenty-five years younger present day, I would’ve clearly grown up in an always-connected environment. Text messaging would be the default.
But then I think about the type of person I am at my core: the one who rejects what is often deemed popular. It feels like the most punk rock thing a kid can do present day is not have TikTok or SnapChat and wear actual shoes out in public instead of Crocs. Pants, too, and not pajama bottoms.
Thus, my personal consensus as to the modern love affair with texting is I would potentially dislike smartphones and text messages even more than I do at my current age. As a result, I would either be viewed as an old soul and highly desirable because of my rebellious ways or the exact opposite: I’d get dumped within a few days because I left my girlfriend’s text on Unread or I didn’t respond back to her in a timely manner.
Thankfully I’m married, in my 40s, and don’t have to worry about my wee men dying a thousand deaths for all eternity.
Maybe Tomorrow
Maybe, just maybe, it’s this surviving rebellion within my being that keeps my phone tucked away in the dresser drawer with my socks and underwear. My way of rebelling against this unspoken standard our contemporary culture has set: that I am to be readily available when the Pavlov’s bell that is the smartphone notification calls me.
The ding or the vibration of the text.
But I won’t take to the kibble because the technology feeds me. I’ll take to it when I’m ready.
Because eventually, when it’s convenient for me, I will open the drawer, take out my phone, and see your text message on the screen. I’ll begin typing back, “Hey, sorry for the delay.”
And for a moment, just before I hit send, I feel a sense of relief. Maybe the person on the other end will forgive me. Maybe they’ll understand where I’m coming from. Maybe they are just like me, like Dwayne: a different breed in this breakneck speed of instant communication.
But then I hesitate because it’s been a few hours since they sent their text to me. They may think I’m rude.
So I put my phone back in the drawer before pressing send.
I’ll reply after dinner, I think to myself.
Or maybe tomorrow.
Maybe.
Don’t take it personally. It’s me, not you. I swear.
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