Ok ya non . . . this is what one of my early text messages to my son looked like. What did I mean to say? I don’t remember, probably something like “Please call home, Love, Mom”. I need to back up a little, and explain what drove a middle-aged woman to learn to text.

Our youngest son is a junior in college – that’s probably enough said right there. He considers talking on the phone a necessary evil. So communicating with him on a regular basis can be problematic, particularly since he doesn’t listen to his voice mail – “Please leave a message?” – pointless.

What’s a mother to do? Threatening to take away the cell phone is no threat at all; he knows we won’t. And, the “answer your ***** phone” lecture is just a waste of breath, and, repeated often enough, could potentially lead to Alec Baldwin like fits of apoplexy.

But frustration breeds innovation. I noticed when our son was home visiting, that, while he does not answer his phone often, he does get his phone out and flip it open randomly. An ah-ha moment for me - he is reading text messages.

Urgent messages usually revolve around my son’s health, money, or transportation. So I am, albeit slowly, teaching myself to text.

Process
1. Find the “text” icon. Turns out it is a spinning envelope icon, which is always spinning, whether you have new text messages or not. Misconception: I had assumed that the spinning envelope icon was for picking up or sending email from my phone. Wrong.
2. Click on the spinning envelope. Text? OK, yes please. Blank screen, header with two icons, a blinking cursor. That’s good – I know that means I can type. Now, typing with a phone keypad? I enter a c by hitting the abc key three times, so far so good. Except c is in a c loop and will not cycle back to a, so the word “call” looks like this “cccc”. I figure if Cancel means Back maybe it will mean backspace too. Yes. So I can type the letter c and backspace. Progress. I know there has to be a “space” key somewhere, so I search the “weird” keys until I find a little bracket buried on the # key.
3. Now I am trying to type mom, it keeps coming out as nonmom. If I backspace I lose the mom part and just have non. I dive deeper into the menu.
4. Text Format sounds like a logical choice. Wrong. It just gives me the option to bold nonmom.
5. In the top left corner is the transfusion icon? An icon shaped like an IV bag and filled with red (turns out that this is really the pencil icon). I select the icon and get a Mode menu. I assumed that I was in “abc normal” mode by default, but since mom is non, things are obviously not proceeding normally. I select “abc normal” and enter. I type mom successfully.
6. Except, when I try to type my next message it defaults again to it’s original mode, one I can only call “abby normal” – think Young Frankenstein.
7. Because it’s been two weeks since my last text foray, I have to repeat steps 1 through 6 again.
8. In the transfusion icon menu I find a choice called Templates, these are common messages like “Where are you?” However, there is no “Call Mom” or “Money in bank” listed; these messages have got to be common enough to deserve a template slot.
9. I can’t figure out how to create my own templates, but assume that I can modify an existing template. Wrong. If you select a template message and then try to update it the keypad reverts to abby normal mode.
10. I' m lost, go to Text Format again. Back out of Text Format. Search for Mode menu, finally find it. Reset to abc normal mode and spend 10 minutes entering a three word message.
11. Do not text for a month. Repeat steps 1 through 6.

Obviously, my son is not in danger of receiving daily texts from me. I have sent six text messages in three months, they look like this:
Hi
Hi money in bank
Call
OK ya non
Check email
Got email good luck on tests

Responses:
Ill call at ltr know ur at work running around like my heads cut off
Cubs number 1 in division