The Art of Texting

All girls suck at texting.  I am a girl and even I’ll admit this… it’s just a flaw in our genetic makeup I guess.  If left on my own, you better believe you’d be seeing doub and trip texts, pictures of food, pictures of injuries, pictures of dogs, Disney quotes, updates on my day you that don’t care about and don’t require a response, accents that don’t make sense… it’s bad.  A few years ago I sent a drunken text message to a guy I had gone on one date with that said “B Nownom wan gonna be I your side of town…” he decided to be ‘just friends’ (SHOCKER! we still are though, which is cool) and he still calls me B-Now.

So now that Ryan is coaching me on all these texting faux pas (I’m pretty sure it’s what keeps our friendship alive), I’m recognizing them more and more in myself and in others!  It’s like the moment you realize you say “But, um” inbetween every sentence and… you… can’t… stop……

But, um ANYWAYS.  If you read between the lines on the Mattress Salesman post, you may have noticed that I didn’t seem too excited about the actual date with HMS.  He’s a great guy and all… really sweet, not very funny, loves his family, blaaaah blah blah… but the deal breaker with him is his texting.  I don’t think you’d believe me if I wrote it out… so I’m going to offer up some screen shots for ya.

This was a couple days before our date… I was still looking forward to it at this point and was joking about how pickup lines are too easy for mattress salesmen:

and then he went ooooooooooon and onnnnnnnnnn about penguin orgies.  I kid you not – check the featured image for this post on the homepage if you don’t believe me.

Here’s a highlight from the next day, he asked me how I slept my first night on my new mattress.  I said my neighborhood is scary and that I’m such a wimp… so I tried to change the subject by asking about his day.  Which led to this:

(notice the timestamps)

I wasn’t trying to be rude…. but someone had to say SOMETHING.

This texting ordeal made me want to go out on this date with him less and less…. I’m just sending you the entertaining ones, you’re not even seeing all of it!  So once we went out, I think he’s pretty into me and is falling into the life-updates-i-don’t-care-about faux pas:

Notice I gave a brief one sentence update… and got that response.  When exactly did we get to this point?

Finally he got to where he tried to casually ask me out again.  I had told him on our date that I was leaving town Wednesday.  After some baseball ramblings I received this:SIDENOTE: How is this even possible??? Someone needs to help this guy.  Notice the timestamps, texting continues:WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY.  I’m generally really really good about being direct with guys, but the rejection I want to give him I don’t want to put in writing for fear of him rereading it over and over again and not to mention the slew of octo-texts I’d receive after (yes, eight is his record of texts without me responding just in case you were curious (yes I’ve counted)).

But um, serious question: how do I tell someone “It’s not me, it’s you” ….?  While we dwell on that, let us all take a moment to reflect on this lesson learned in art of texting… and in the meantime, my apologies in advance HMS but you’re about to get the boot.