I have been texting ever since I had my first cell phone in 2001, even though texts cost about 25¢ each at the time, I think and touch screens and keyboards on phones were near nonexistent. You had to slowly, painfully bang out the letters on your nine key. I loved the idea of what I thought were tiny little emails going out through my phone, not knowing what wondrous advances in technology the next few years would bring. For example, in 2001, my Nokia had a black and white screen with green backlighting. You were considered fancy if you had the lights on your phone replaced to blue or red, a vibrating battery pack and a fancy faceplate -my price per month- about $50 and that was just for calls- and get this you younger Gen Yers - it wasn’t even unlimited! Now in 2012, I own an Android. I regularly listen to radio stations from across the US and look up things on Wikipedia on it and I pay $50 a month.
I have gone through many phones and carriers in the last 11 years. I have been with T mobile, Verizon twice, Virgin Mobile twice and now on Metro PCS. I think I may have also been on Sprint. I am currently on my 3rd Samsung. First, the Juke, the cutest little itty bitty phone that played music, then the Intensity which was not a Smartphone, but was almost there. I got e mail and Facebook on its preloaded apps and it had very rudimentary and slow mobile internet. Now I have a Samsung Admire. My first Android. My mind is constantly blown by what I can do on this thing. Thinking back, I have owned 9 phones total.
I remember in the late 90’s and early 2000’s there was a trend in making phones smaller and smaller. At one point, they got to be about the size of beepers. Y’all remember beepers right? Those little clip on boxes that beep and flash the senders phone number? I laugh about it now, but in high school I was such a poser. I carried around an inactivated one just to look like everyone else. But I digress. It all came to a head when one of the big manufacturers came out with a “lipstick phone” it was a tiny black and white thing with no keypad. I have no idea how it worked. It was meant to fit into a tiny evening bag and not to be a primary phone. What, did the phone manufacturers think we were going to have “phone wardrobes” where we just pop the simcard out of our phones and trade it among the many in our collection based on our moods? Now the trend is to make phones bigger and bigger. I eventually expect to see a guy holding an iPad sized monstrosity to his ear walking by.
I was originally going to write this as an article on why I love to text rather than speak on the phone. It started out that way, note the opening sentence? I may write that post eventually. Sometimes, when you write, a piece will take you where it wants to go and not where you tell it to. I mainly like to text because I feel like I am so much more clever with the written word rather than the spoken. That and I am hard of hearing and HATE screaming Hello! Hello! into my phone like an idiot. When you text, long stretches of silence are not awkward, and you can think of what you will say before you type it out. I also like to save favorite texts to read again and again. You can’t do that with phone calls, that would be considered surveillance.
