Most frequent text message? ‘Now on bus on way home’. Or cup on way home. Predictive text is all very well, but given the number of times I send the same message, you’d think it would predict the right word, eh?
Having now had a mobile for maybe a bit over a year, I am getting the hang of things a bit more, though I am definitely in the ‘laughable’ category as far as teens go. I don’t upgrade my handset! I don’t have a cheeky ring tone! I don’t play songs loudly for my posse to sing along to on the bus! (All these are fairly common on my bus route.)
I resisted mobiles for ages. Why be available all the time? What’s wrong with ‘your word being your bond’ for when you’ll meet up with someone? But they do come in handy on work trips abroad, where the cheap B&B you found online has no phone in the room, or it’s too late to call but you’re thinking of your beloved, that kind of thing.
Another reason to be laughable to teens – I top up my mobile once a year…or so far, anyway. Given that I almost only use it for texts, that makes life easy. Consequently, when it actually rings, I get a bit panicked. I can’t get it out of my bag in time.   Dear oh dear, they might say.
In my defence, I am a step beyond Mum and Dad having a mobile ‘for the car’ but only turning it on in cases of dire emergency (actually, I’m not sure when they turn it on at all, though it may be when Mum drives back from choir on her own.)
Predictive text can be fun though, in emails too. I used to have a colleague, whose name would regularly default to ‘boffin’ when I started typing it in. It was a reasonably good choice too…And I could change my name to frydab, or something equivalent, if I get fed up with being Frydman. Though I doubt it would mean they’d spell it right then either.
Anyway, I am smug in the knowledge that I don’t commit the cardinal mobile sin: to shout loudly ‘hello? hello? yes…I’m on the bus…train…‘ and other forms of public transport. Those mortals are destined for the circle of hell where the bus runneth over. That’s my prediction, anyway.