Text in the City

People who've known me since college might be shocked to know that I do not text.  That right now for another few days, I have a dumb phone that doesn't even have a web browser.   If it even does texting, I'm not sure how. I'm borrowing my Dad's old cell phone until my new one gets here.

I've always liked being an early adopter.  Heck, I took my own answering machine with me to summer camp (pre-voicemail days!).   I've carried a cell phone since 1996.  I've had an email account since 1992, a web page since 1995.  I had a Palm pilot in 1999, from there, went to the early Palm Phones and never looked back.    I've had Trios and Samsungs and I don't even remember what else.  Let me tell you, nothing out there now is as cool as my first Palm phone was to me, back in 2001.  It meant I didn't have to carry two devices.  So my phone from 10 years ago was better than the phone I have now! 

But from having a phone with internet access, it always seemed silly to text.  Why would I want to get a text when I could get an email instead?  Which someone could type out from any computer without hurting their thumbs to do?   Since I didn't text other people, it was always surprising when I would get a text out of the blue.  My friends Jason and Lisa liked to send "Happy New Year!"  "Happy Arbor Day!" etc. messages.  While it was nice that they were thinking of me, I had to pay 20 cents for the privilege of hearing from them, like a collect call.

Then the spam texts started.  Somehow my cell phone # got onto some list of people looking to refinance, and I got many messages a day and worst, in the middle of the night, barraging me with "rates have dropped!" etc.  I contacted Sprint and they set up my account to block all texts except for a special list of friends' numbers which I manually added one by one.  I added my friend Steve, who is really not the type to do "Happy Arbor Day" messages, and Jenna and Jill, who I would frequently meet in loud public places where we couldn't hear our phones.  And one other person (is it you?  did you make the cut?!).  And that's it!  

So from now on, anyone who is trying to text me, well, they might THINK I got their message, but I'm blissfully unaware of the attempt.  And this block has been set up for YEARS, but every so often, people will mention that they texted me and act hurt that I never got back to them.  So occasionally I wonder what I am missing out on.  But I get every single email, Twitter message, Facebook posting, LinkedIn mail, etc. and I don't pay 20 cents each to read them.  If someone spams my inbox, I hit delete and move on.  It doesn't rouse me out of a deep sleep the way texts do, or cause me to pull the car over to see who needs to urgently reach me (oh!  rates have dropped again!).