Texting Language

I didn't get a cell phone until I was a junior in high school, much later than almost all of my friends. When I finally received my first cellular device, it would take me forever to send a text message. I remember my friends would make fun of me because I had to use my index finger to type each letter one at a time. I would spend minutes trying to send a text saying "hey what's up?" After about a month of sending text messages, I finally got the hang of using both hands to send a message at a quick pace. I was nothing compared to some of my friends, however, and they were able to compose complete sentences on their phones without even looking at them.

After finally getting used to typing text messages, I had to now overcome the texting lingo barrier. I would get countless texts saying "lol", having no idea it meant "laugh out loud." My friends would also make fun of me because I spelled out every single word in my text messages. I soon learned that texting "ttyl" was much more efficient than actually typing out "talk to you later." After a lot of exposure to the texting language, I was finally on the same level as my friends. Today, I pride myself on my ability to text entire paragraphs in seconds.