by Caroline Garlick

Created on: April 07, 2009

I seem to have lost contact with a great number of my friends. I think I'm an approachable person. I'm able to have fun, converse, socialise. I can get along with anyone. My problem seems to be that I grasp, understand and use the English language.

You see, it's not a necessary ability anymore. In fact, it's scorned. Due to my inability to write a sentence without punctuation, and my tendency to recoil in horror from any written correspondence that replaces perfectly good words with a string of numbers and smiley faces, I am cast out. I do not belong.

I don't hate mobiles. They've been around for most of my life. I use one myself. I call my other half when I'm at the supermarket, to check on the current cat food situation. I've even become addicted to games on my mobile, downloaded new wallpapers, bought fun fascias to brighten up my handset and listened to the mp3s saved in its memory. While I'm not exactly a gadget junkie, I'm no technophobe either. I carry it with me everywhere. When at work, I check it on my breaks to see if anyone has been in contact. And when they have, a little piece of my sanity invariably floats away as the words "Message deleted" flash across the screen at my command.

I rarely reply anymore. If the text message is inviting me to lunch or out for a drink, I will now call the person at my earliest convenience. I prefer this for a number of reasons. It's more polite, it's cheaper, and it is much, much quicker. Although this fact is hotly disputed, it remains a fact nonetheless. While a phone call will cost more in price and in time than one text, an arrangement can never be organised with just one text. It always starts with something along the lines of, "hey hows u want 2 go pub 2nite 4 drinx". I sigh deeply, with an inexplicable sadness overwhelming my internal grammar bully (who, incidentally, wants to go and find this person and stab them in the head with a sharpened apostrophe). I text back, "Hi, yes I'm fine thanks. How are you? A drink sounds good, what time do you want to meet?" My correspondent, by now I'm sure intent on provoking me, replies, "lol u no, same sh1t, diff day! :p 8 ok", from which I infer that she's also doing fine and would like to meet at eight o'clock. However, my work shift doesn't finish until half past seven, and by the time I've arrived home and freshened up, I don't think I'll be able to make eight o'clock. I text again, indicating that nine would be better for me. Her next message, asking, without a question

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