sometimes, i just draw pictures

My academic success was hampered by several things—laziness, apathy, a poor retention of facts and figures. And, my later years in school were always hampered by the fact that I was generally satisfied with the B+. Sure, I could go for the A but I already know enough for the B+. It seemed like a lot of extra work just to top off an already quite full tank. This isn’t to say I am dispassionate about life or success, but that I am rather dispassionate when it comes to early British Literature. As an English major.

Sidebar defense: In my defense, I became an English major not because of a love of English Literature, but because I was pretty good at it. I mean, how hard is it? You read something and you tell someone what it means. This means this because it says so. Don’t believe me? Well, let me show you exactly where. Here, here, and here. The best part was poetry. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. Except for the occasional Whitman or T.S. Eliot monstrosity, poems are like 20 lines long and have a title. “This poem is about sadness.” “I feel so sad, so very sad / I feel so very sad.” Then you write something about how this poem is about sadness because it says so. It does. Right there in it. See? After you have established that, you make a reach. First, apply the adverb perhaps and the verb suggest. “Perhaps the theme even suggests that his sadness is the sadness of God / man / God toward man / man toward God / man toward man.” I mean, perhaps. Who the fuck knows?

Anyway, other than personal flaws, I think that a large gap in my academic abilities lies in my inability to take good notes. Part of it is that I give myself too much credit. “Oh, you’ll remember that,” my lazy hand tells me brain, “I won’t write that down because you can just remember the year that Freud was born. We’re good.” But it also has to do with just the things my ear chooses to latch onto and the things it chooses not to. For example, it chooses to notice a grammatical error in someone’s lecture but not, say, the actual sentence he was saying. What did he just say? Well, I know there was a “who” that should have been a “whom” somewhere in there. Oh, the actual content? Yeah, I let that pitch sail by.

Still, my notes tend to be vaguely helpful to me—like a list of keywords from a conversation (once, in a class I wrote down “the heart of the matter” after my professor said “we’re going to get right into the heart of the matter of this chapter of Ulysses today.” I did not write what the heart of the matter actually was). They will spark some “oh yeah I remember talking about that” sort of thoughts in my brain. The real problem lies in when I write them for the benefit of someone else. You have two roads that we could travel down: the nonsense road (“the heart of the matter”) or, like the notes I took for a recent conference session I led, the useless road. At one point, I wrote something like “Museum arrow Schools and Groups arrow Teens.” I bet that was really helpful for our participants.

This also comes into play in taking a phone message. Well, I didn’t write down the woman’s last name, but I did write down the word community group about six times. I also wrote down her phone number and the number of teachers in her school, but not the name of her school. So, good luck! It’s a wonder I wasn’t laid off earlier.

Merry Christmas Eve, everybody!

oh, and the niners lost.

I am not one to spend money on insurance or warranties or protection plans. Like [astute political reference], I am typically short-sighted when it comes to matters of financial security. Why spend a little extra now when I can put it into my savings account (and by savings account, I mean the nearest place that sells food)? Who cares that I always break my iPod/Blackberry/U-Haul? Why spend $18 now when I can spend $265 later on a whole new one? Better yet, I often choose not to learn from my mistakes. So when the next expensive piece of equipment dies on me for no reason after I drop it, I don’t think “hey I’m accident prone, I better play it safe.” Instead I choose to forgive and forget (as in, forgive myself and then quickly forget anything substantial I could have learned).

I think that a toilet plunger is that AppleCare Protection Plan of your bathroom. It is a forgettable purchase, and, for some, an embarrassing one. I, for one, choose not to be embarrassed by drug store purchases. Why, yes, that is a large tub of Metamucil I am buying. Thank you. Debit, please. The plunger is a purchase I often forgo / forget simply because it sort of falls under that category of insurance. Not something I need at the moment I am in the drug store, so something I never think to buy while I’m there. It is, in fact, a useless object until disaster strikes.

Disaster struck. It did not strike me in either perpetrator or host. But, I was that supporting character who helped keep the action of the story going. The Judy Greer, if you will. So, perpetrator, host, and Judy Greer were sitting around, watching TV, and disaster struck. After it was established that the easiest single-person solution (that is, the plunger) was not available, we put our heads together.

Sometimes there is a situation that can only be made worse by group work. For example, a clogged toilet with no plunger. There was actually a moment in which two of us shouted a simultaneous “no no no no no!” as the third pulled a chain. Perpetrator referred to it as the new Katrina. You’re doing a heck of a job, Brownie (I can’t take credit for that poop joke, but I am not one to let a poop joke, however plagiarized, pass by). As brownie was doing its job, the levees had broken. Water. Everywhere. (Water, of course, being a euphemism).

With someone now trapped in a bathtub, we sprinkled a whole pack of paper towels on the ground. I had earlier suggested that dish soap can help to loosen clogged drains. It did succeed in making the water soapier, which I suppose is a step in the right direction. So, the soapy flood waters were now a big papery mess as we debated the fate of the bathmat.

Then, we found a plunger. Well, most of a plunger. The handle was so short that one’s (my) hands had to be submerged in water (again, euphemism) to use it. Also, we found dish gloves. Well, I found them. Sorry, host’s mom. These had a higher calling. Thankfully, a plunger is a very effective tool. The waters receded and all that was left to do was throw away the hundreds of paper towels, the plunger, and the dish gloves, mop the floor, and then close the door behind us.

It was a good reminder to me that in my own bathroom, it might be a good idea to have a plunger on hand, in the spirit of always hoping for the best but preparing for the worst. And someone over there is going to have to remember to buy a new plunger, too.

And some new dish gloves.

full full disclosure: i may have been thinking of joanna kerns the first time

I once had a writing professor who decried the rampant iPod usage in New York City. You miss out on hearing the world around you, she would say. There is where you’ll find inspiration. There is where you’ll find stories. Well, I have been iPod-less for a while (not by choice, but by my clever combination of clumsiness and poverty), so my commute is often subject to inspiration and stories whether I want them or not. The other day, as I headed out to my second ever day of (still fartless!) yoga, I was unintentional eavesdropper to an odd conversation.

The woman next to me was telling her friend about her CUNY School of Journalism application. She complained as she flipped through the pages. “They want us to answer all of these questions. Here, look at this. They want us to identify all of these.”

Well, I felt like I was in it to win it, so I peeked at her list. There were many blank spots. “Look at this, I don’t know who these people are!” The first three were all blank: Judith Miller, Tom DeLay and John Roberts. “Who is this? Tom DeLay. I don’t know who that is.” Now, I don’t necessarily believe that everyone needs to who Tom DeLay or, say, the current Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court are. But surely, the one group of people who absolutely should is journalism students, right? Am I crazy?

Full disclosure: if someone were to ask me who Judith Miller is, I would quickly and confidently answer, “oh, she was the mom on Who’s the Boss?” But, I am not applying to be a journalism major anywhere. And, if asked who Valerie Plume is, I would know. So there.

I mean, different people know different things. She did have something written for a lot of the other terms. For example, for “Derek Jeter” she had written “Yankees” and for “Darfur” she had written “hunger.” She gets points for concision. Too many writers today suffer from an intolerable, over-modified case of logorrhea and pretension—showing off for their readers that they know who Valerie Plume is (as if it is somehow impressive). Touché, subway lady.

But, I can’t help but wonder why she is even looking at a degree in journalism. Is that really what you’re drawn to? I mean, it’s not exactly a degree that opens a lot of doors (says the English major). What is your end goal? Maybe she intends to learn who Maureen Dowd is (another blank she asked her friend about). Maybe. But the way she said it, it was as if no one should care who Maureen Dowd is. Like a high-school student asking during a poetry lesson, “when are we ever going to use this?” (Answer: the ability to understand metaphoric language is essential to all forms of communication; the overarching skill of being able to read, understand, and reiterate the meaning of a text is necessary for any professional job; and engaging the imagination, that is, the metaphoric, allows any and all learning to occur, you little punk). She then took her application, folded it into quarters, and put it back into her purse.

Maybe I am just a big snob (true) and maybe she has some vision in mind in which a degree in journalism will be useful (it’s possible). I mean, there are plenty of celebrity news writers and whatnot that probably have no clue who Samuel Alito is and will happily live their lives not knowing. And they’ll probably make more money than I will and get to meet cool people like Maggie Gyllenhaal or Zooey Deschanel or that guy from Once. So maybe she has a point.

Or maybe, I just need to invest in a new iPod (donations are always welcome).

the only things keeping me from getting my own are money, allergies, and my fear of securing my spinsterdom for good

There are definitely moments in which the bitterness of being laid off takes over. They are, for now, fleeting and inconsequential. But I think it all stems from the feeling that I just faded away unnoticed and unannounced, without ceremony. They insisted my termination was budgetary and not performance-based, but you would then think that there could be some fanfare to my departure. I didn’t need a goodbye parade, but there is certainly space between that and being swept under the rug. A card, maybe.

In any case, in my throes of moping, my room has become the set of a future episode of Hoarders. So last night, as I waded through the knee-deep swamp of pizza boxes and Duane Reade bags and dirty sweatshirts, I felt like perhaps it was time to do something. I felt I should at least take out the trash (I think there was a bag of moldy bread in there). At 11:45 PM, I collected a large bag of trash to take out to the cans that sat in the vestibule in the front of our building. As I threw it away, a little friend came up to greet me. Hello, kitty cat!

Now, as any true Hall family member knows, cats have a way of finding us. It is as if we give off a scent of feline compassion with a touch of gullibility. So this little cat, collarless and adorable, pawed around looking lost and confused. There are only four apartments in our building and he was indoors, so he had to belong to a neighbor. He was much too comfortable being held and petted to be a stray. But instead of knocking on doors in the middle of the night, my roommate and I felt the best move was to take him in our apartment and leave some notes.

If you are a careful reader of my blog, you may already know that I have recently been diagnosed as allergic to cats. What the allergist didn’t catch was my big suckerdom for cuddly creatures. So I set up a little bed, a bowl of water, and some of Viva’s dog food with a splash of water (to soften the big pieces too big for little kitty’s mouth). I put him in the bathroom because I felt that when he did eventually poop in my room, it would at least be the easiest place to clean. So I bid him goodnight, turned out the light and went to bed. But this cat was in no mood to sleep. He wanted to play! And he felt that if I were not going to play, then he would find his own game. His favorite game is apparently knock down objects in a bathroom. Several times in the night, I had to get up and rescue something that I figured should not be battered around by a cat.

And of course, after he finally fell asleep, I realized I now had to use the bathroom. Let me tell you what is always a fun time: sitting on a toilet as a newly-awakened and attention-seeking cat rubbed its allergen-y body all over your cold and swelling legs—all the while you are praying that smell is you and not some yet undiscovered mystery in the corner. Worse yet, I found myself talking to him. “Give me a minute!”

I made him a toy out of toilet paper that he enjoyed about as much as a bad gift from your crazy great-aunt. “Oh, wow a toilet paper ball! Let me politely bat it around a couple of times before I go back to knocking shampoo bottles into the tub. Oh you want to see me play with it again? Ok, here are a few more polite swipes with my paw. Happy now? Great.”

I got back in bed, but he was definitely awake. After scratching at the door for a while, he went back to fighting the evil safety razor cover in the bathtub. “Go to sleep,” I would shout, “It’s late!” In the morning, I went in to brush my teeth before heading out to a doctor appointment. Rare are the times that you say things like “thank god you pooped in the tub,” but it was certainly the easiest way to clean it up. And let me tell you, he is shaped like a little kitty but he can certainly poop like a man.

When I got home, I let him explore my room (as I put the various bottles and hair straighteners back into their proper places). His favorite place, he decided, was my pillows on my bed—which should be fun to sleep on tonight. This was after testing out the inside of my coat, my lap, my lunch, and the inside of my other coat.

But as he closed his little eyes and fell asleep (in a Sphinx position, no less. I swear he is related to the fat cat back home), I felt a genuine bond to the little guy. I mean, you don’t clean up someone else’s poop and not have a bit of a bond. It is why freshman year college roommate has a special place in my heart, for sure. But it was at that moment that the neighbor who owned the cat came by. So I had to give up my new friend (not before playing the keep the cat away from the dog keep the dog away from the door don’t lock yourself out of the apartment game). I’m going to miss my twelve-hour companion. But don’t you worry, I still have some hives to remember him by.

seriously... brown shoes, black socks, grey pants. no lie.

Today I had my follow-up appointment with the allergist. Getting up before noon has already become a struggle, so I arrived out breath and very oddly dressed at 10:30 AM on the nose (miraculously, as I had left the apartment at 9:57 AM). The office was quite full today. I got to read several fine articles in Us Weekly and checked out who wore it best (which is really “who I like better” or often “who I even recognize.” Who the hell is Alexandra Burke? Whoever she is, she did not wear it best.).

From the waiting room, I could overhear another poor sap failing the breathing test. First, there was the exchange of vague instructions: “So what you are going to do is…” “Wait do you want me to do this or this?” “No no no, you are going to [deep inhale] and then blow blow blow blow blow!” “Wait, so…” and then the inevitable doing it wrong. “Blow blow blow blow blow blow blow…no. Try it again.” I think this guy was a smoker. Even worse. I ended each failed test with a giggle or two. He ended his failures with a wet coughing fit. Ew.

For me, today was the “stick you higher up on your arm with bigger needles going deeper into your skin” day. Awesome! Just what I wanted! A needle stuck into a weird corner of my arm near my elbow. Oh! Bonus! Little drops of blood everywhere! Back to the waiting room. Who wore it best? Some chick from Gossip Girl or Academy Award winning actress slash L’Oreal model Penelope Cruz? That’s tough.

Back to the doctor. Apparently, I am allergic to everything in the world except shrimp. It is like my body went out of its way to be allergic to everything but the thing I went in for. Bermuda Grass is on the list now. A couple of other things I didn’t recognize. Dogs. Whatever. But the big prize was dust mites, which apparently mean I have to buy really expensive bedding and never own an upholstered couch again. Hooray!

Oh, and the most disgusting part? Well, there are two. One, the minefield of scabs that now cover my right arm. And two, apparently people with dust mite allergies can also have shellfish reactions—given similar physiology between the two species. Um. Ew. I have always been uncomfortable with the idea of shellfish, as they looked like massive bugs—and apparently, they are. Disgusting.

So, what now? Other than being allergic to everything that ever existed, I will soon enough be the owner of $300 sheets and $150 pillows. I imagine that for unemployed people, really expensive sheets are a sound investment. And I have a couple of nice little scars left over from the last test. I swear I look like a heroin addict with Parkinson’s disease.

In other news, I have an ingrown hair in my armpit, which is not disgusting, uncomfortable or awkward at all. My body is ridiculous.

we did have a close call in the farting department...

Today, I did something for the first time. I took a yoga class. And, going in, I had thought for sure it would be classic fish out of water comedy. And, other than an awkward moment or two with the receptionist (yogi-ceptionist? I'm sure she has some other title), it really was okay. No falling down. No farting loudly in the middle of class. No strange poses my body refused to do. I did reluctantly join in the rounds of oms (ohms?) and there was a stretch or two that was slightly out of my range, but overall it felt natural, relaxing, and energizing. I even got into the breathing in the end, where we felt our breath wash our hearts to reveal our true selves (or something). I bought it. I am not about to jump into the deep end, but I can definitely see the appeal. Maybe I’ll go again this week.

Sometimes, I am surprised by how much I am able to buy into things. I don’t read Twilight or watch Lost or listen to Taylor Swift. Typically, America has one agenda and I have another. Even when we are watching the same thing, America and I must be watching different things (David Cook? Really?). But then there are times when I just jump in headfirst. For a long time I was morally against any sort of phone that didn’t come free with my plan. Then, one day, I bought myself a blackberry. Totally on a whim. Just up and bought it. And I love it. I love love love it. I can’t imagine my life without it.

The blackberry is my best example of a thing I hated that turned to thing I love. It is like a romantic comedy. It started out as that too uptight new coworker to my laidback, Oreo cookie loving self. And then, we were forced to work on some project together or were snowed in a cabin or something. And now we’re in love. Insane oddball nonsense love.

In any case, the next thing on the horizon is a pair of Uggs. Right? Right? What is it, 2004? Am I going to wear them with my pleated mini and my Juicy Couture sweatshirt? Don a trucker cap? Drink a bottle of vitamin water? Sometimes I arrive to the party late enough to try to pretend I wasn’t protesting outside earlier. What? That wasn’t me. That must have been that other guy….

So yeah, I’m slowly becoming a yoga-doing, blackberry-using, ugg-wearing … what is the noun for that? I am pretty sure it is douche bag. Oh well. At least I don’t listen to Taylor Swift.

an instant pizza machine, maybe

One thing I am really curious about is the future of technology—specifically, at what point will it surpass my abilities to keep up? I imagine that there has to be some point in which it just moves too fast. My great-grandmother was able to send an email, but, when faced with a camera phone, asked, “Where do you put the film?”

My father is closer. He gets the general idea of email and text messages and instant messaging. Unfortunately, he doesn’t quite get the nuanced differences in the methodology of each communication. An email, he understands, is somewhat like a letter. You write a whole message and send it. Instant messaging is that one step beyond his grasp.

Dad: Hi Jesse.

jesse: hi dad

Several minutes pass. (Dad is typing)

Dad: [long message] Love, Dad.

jesse: no, dad, it’s like talking. it’s not an email.

A few minutes pass. (Dad is typing)

Dad: Oh okay. Well your mother needs to me to [insert some household activity involving words like “baseboards” or “retaining wall”]. Puff says hello. Love, Dad.

jesse: just talk and press enter.

The spelling and grammar has been edited for your convenience.

And, yes, there is nothing my father loves more than to greet me via the cats.

Recently, he became the owner of a blackberry and has taken up text messaging as a way of communicating. Today, after not immediately responding to the first text message, I was treated to four more identical copies (plus a missed call from my mother—it was apparently a team effort today). This was all in the span of time it takes to withdraw some money out of an ATM.

My mother, bless her heart, has not yet ventured into text message territory. My father once asked me to show her how. I politely declined.

She does, however, use instant messaging and throws out the occasional “lol” or “omg” as, I think, a way of ensuring that those phrases are officially uncool. It’s like when my 4^th grade campers started wearing “Vote for Pedro” shirts. Time to let it go, mainstream America.

There do exist common technologies that I do not participate in. I have never tweeted anyone (is that even a transitive verb?) nor have I ever downloaded an iPhone app. I have no idea how to play Call of Duty. I have never watched a movie on blu-ray. And I got in trouble for not knowing how to use my parents’ DVR (it said something about changing to NCIS, and I selected “no.” I didn’t want to watch NCIS!). But I assume that if I ever want to do any of these, I could. This isn’t what I’m talking about.

I am assuming at one point, I am going to search for keyboard on some kiosk that uses my brainwaves or sit and shout “winky face” into the voice command of some magic hologram communication technology. I really wonder at what point my brain just can no longer wrap itself around the concept behind a device. I hope that it is something awesome. Not something scary like a robot dog that will outlive me.

Also, when did RADAR become radar?

Being laid off sucks. There isn’t much more insight into the situation. I feel a little like how I imagine the first contestant voted off of a reality show feels. You knew a cut was happening. You knew someone was going home. And you knew that no matter what there was a chance it was going to be you. But you are still not prepared to have your torch extinguished or your knives wrapped up or whatever. It just sucks.

On an unrelated note, I often find myself to be blatantly hypocritical. Not in, I hope, any sort of major way, but in the little things in life. As a driver, I get angry with pedestrians who expect me to stop despite their crossing against the light or in the middle of the street. And as a pedestrian, I walk assuming the driver has to stop and will (even if I cross against the light or in the middle of the street). I get the same way with e-vites. As a person who is e-vited to an e-vent, I wait and wait and wait to e-spond until the last possible e-pportunity. Yes? No? Well, let’s see who’s going first, but in the meantime I am going to e-tend that I have not yet checked my e-mail.

Also, when did e-mail crossover to be email. When did we give up the hyphen?

But, when I am the e-host I find myself refreshing and refreshing the page. Why don’t people e-spond, I say. Why are people so e-rude? RSVP! Come on! Three-quarters of that abbreviation is a very snooty French please. You could at least be polite enough to say no.

Also, in case you were ever wondering, an abbreviation that is said as a word, like say RADAR, is called an acronym. An abbreviation that is said as a set of letters, like say PTA, is called an initialism. Yes, there is a word for every type of word.

In any case, I’m the player who hates the game. I suppose one could see it as karma with a very quick turnaround. I like to see that sort of immediate balance in life. It helps me to believe that I won’t end up as a mosquito splattered across a windshield someday.

on the plus side, I can eat all the cockroaches I want

I was laid off yesterday. More on this later.

In the past couple of weeks, I had convinced myself I was allergic to shrimp. So, it was off to the allergist.

I have gone to a doctor plenty of times convinced I had some ailment which I did not. I imagine it comes a lot from my parents who dealt with a lot of sick progeny who were typically not me. So when it was me—say, the time I got a weird, puffy bug bite or the time I stabbed my hand with a pencil—it was a trip to the emergency room, just like any of the other kids. It didn't matter how minor it actually was. So now, any time I suspect something may be wrong, I visit the doctor.

The visit typically begins a long story. I don’t know if that is how most people start off a doctor appointment, but it is how I start one. “Well,” I begin, usually with a sort of a high-pitched intonation. “Well…” and then we take a nice little journey through an anecdote without a lot of the salient information but with a dash of unnecessary specifics.

“Well,” I began (after some runaround with the receptionist and the insurance card and the referral I was told I didn’t need but I did need but it was okay because they were going to fax it over). “Well, I was eating shrimp at this event we had at work where they were giving us some free food and felt funny afterwards. And later I was eating Chinese food that I had ordered in and I felt funny again. I don’t know how to describe funny. Like. Unusual.” The doctor asked, “How long ago was this?” I had no idea. A week or so. Maybe a month. No, that doesn’t sound right.

The doctor asked a few more questions about what “funny” meant (you know, funny. Not like I usually feel. Not like I felt before). Then, I took a breathing test with a little Asian nurse. There was definitely miscommunication. “What you’re going to do is…” And then the test wouldn’t read right. “No, you’re not doing it right!” “I don’t know what you’re asking me to do!” I felt like she was trying to teach me to drive for the first time. “Breathe, breathe, breathe!” “I have no more breath!” “That’s because you’re doing it wrong!” I am pretty sure she jumped up and down at one point.

Sidebar anecdote: it brought up the memory of a visit to the eye doctor in which the technician pleaded with me to open my eye wider to take a picture of it with some expensive machine and I crossly protested that I could not. “Please try!” “This is as far as they open!” Anyway. I’m pretty good at math, so it balances.

Somewhere in there, I got something usable for the doctor to see (whose door was open the whole time and I am sure could hear the whole conversation). And then came the pinpricks of allergens. One of them was “cockroach” which is disgusting one on level already. But then I found myself playing out this story in which it wasn’t the shrimp but a cockroach in my Chinese food that had caused the reaction and that garlic sauce was really cockroach bath sauce.

It wasn’t.

And I’m not allergic to shrimp. At least not by the first round of testing. I am allergic to cats and grass and tree pollen and a bunch of other things he mentioned that I hope I wasn’t supposed to memorize (what’s a tree plantain?).

So, in addition to joining the growing ten whatever percent of unemployed Americans in this economy, I am also joining the ranks of (judging by the patients I witnessed flitting in and out of the office, greeting the receptionist by name) nebbish (white) men with medically diagnosed allergies. Great.

in celebration of text messages

I am really bad on the phone. I lie all the time on job interviews and in cover letters and claim to have good telephone manner. Or at least I don’t explicitly say anything to the contrary. But, the reality is that I’m a stuttering, rambling mess who gives people about fourteen minutes more information than they wanted and says “yes” when I really mean “oh, I wasn’t listening, could you repeat the question and this time I’ll try to pay attention.”

Now, I seem to remember that in my early high school years, I used to spend hours on the phone. Hours. Just talking. I cannot even imagine what we must have talked about. I think that, in hell, the playback on those phone conversations is playing on an endless loop. “You know that song? ‘Have You Ever?’ That totally is how I’m feeling right now….” “I totally know how you feel.” And so on. In any case, that sort of tapered off once I was able to drive a car and actually interact with people. And really, that cannot be what people imagine when they think of “good telephone manner.”

And, the only thing harder than being good on the phone is being good at voicemail. I chalk a lot of it up to the pressure of a monologue. On the phone, there is a natural ebb and flow that keeps you from having to remember all your lines at once. “Hi yes, may I please speak to Ryan?” And while that is going on, I can take a minute to remember my name. And somewhere in the “how are you this morning” and “oh great, thanks for asking” I can try to find my own ass and the reason I have the phone held up to my face. But with a voicemail, suddenly all of that pressure is on at once. While I am scrambling to come up with a concise version of my conversation, I also have to remember what my extension is and when would be a great time for you to call me back. And somewhere in that mad, unexpected dash, a vital piece of information is left behind. Or worse yet, thrown in at the last minute, like trying to stir the sugar into an already mixed cake batter on its way to the oven. “By the way, this is Jesse!” click.

Then came along a brilliant invention: the text message. I love it. I love it so much. There is the necessary concision, the subtle politics, the timing of it all. Don’t yet have the answer? Text back a “?” and give yourself a minute to figure it out. Don’t actually have something to say? Text back “:)” and you’re good to go. In a real conversation, and especially, on the phone, smiling in response to a comment makes you a jackass.

But, the best part of all is in that awkward world of dating. If I give you my number, and you text me—Thank GOD is what I think. Maybe that’s an atypical reaction, but there is nothing worse than the long pauses that happen with a pre-first-date phone call. Let’s save that for dinner, buddy. Give me a when and where and a winky face, and I’m good to go.

So maybe not the solution for the professional phone call, text messages remain a lifesaver. So, please don’t be offended if I text you. You didn’t want to talk to me on the phone anyway. Believe me.