My email problem

Sometimes it's amazing how life imitates ... life.

The other day my flip phone (I'm a dinosaur) buzzed, and I answered it.

It was a text message.

I usually don't do text messages, figuring it's a lot more efficient just to talk into the damn phone instead of thumbing alphabet characters in some kind of pseudo shorthand that denigrates everything I've been taught about grammar and spelling.

But, hey. That's just me.

Still, I occasionally get excited by receiving text messages, which I figure are something akin to emails from my cell phone. Most of the texts I get are from our young family neighbors across the street who are inviting us dinosaurs over for another porch party.

Oh, boy.

But this particular text was different. It wasn't from our neighbors. In fact, I think it was a wrong number text, because this is what it said:

"How quick can u get here. He gone now"

Holy crap.

I had to read it twice before I read it a third time. I didn't recognize the phone number of the sender. Whaa...? I read the message to Kim.

Then I deleted it. I deleted it as fast as I could. Gone. Trash can.

Except, in a sense, I couldn't delete this one. It stayed in my mind. Who was that calling? Is there some kind of an affair going on, or is it something perfectly innocent, like, I'm late, I've got a flat tire, so hurry. I decided there was nothing innocent about it at all. In fact, it sounded incredibly urgent.

The fact that the text came to me instead of its intended target is also a bit troubling. I'm assuming the intended never got the message. How does that bode for that relationship, especially if the intended doesn't get there quick enough ... if at all? The fact that I got the message might suggest the sender was overly eager and carelessly misdialed. Why wasn't the intended on speed dial? Well, that won't work because if the cell phone is found by the partner, then what is this unfamiliar-but-incriminating speed dial number about?

Man, this is complicated.

Sounds like government work.

I'd like to say this whole episode is precisely why I don't do texting because of the unintended consequences that hide camouflaged in the ether, but I'm not that smart.

Mostly, I'm just lazy. And maybe that's good enough.