I seem to remember BITD (back in the day) when we humans communicated using words. You remember W O R D S don't you ? That was when you took a series of alphabet letters, strung them together to form a thing called a word that when written or spoken produced a mental picture of something. For example . . . the letters D - O - G when spoken or viewed made you think of a friendly four legged creature with a wagging tail and a passion for licking your face.
No so anymore . . . with the advent of our advanced (?) technology people, especially YOUNG people, can no longer take the time to string words together to form sentences. (Remember sentences? When you put a bunch of alphabet letters together to form "words" and then strung those words together to create a thought.) All that is in the past thanks to texting. (That word alone is one that never existed WIWAK (when I was a kid). Now we all must convey our messages and thoughts as rapidly as possible because we are way too busy to take the time to speak or write entire words and sentences. NTM (not to mention) the problem of wearing out our thumbs from all the typing on the face of that phone. ICR (I can remember) when it took all 10 fingers to type a message . . . just as I am doing here. I LOVE, (that is actually a word), to type. That feeling of transposing a thought in my head to written words delights the hell out of me. I remember complaining to my mom when ever she made me write thank you notes to people who had given me a gift. I HATED, (another actual word), writing notes. "What should I say?' I would whine to my mom and her answer was always the same . . . "Write down what ever words you would speak if that person were standing in front of you". And it worked ! I still hated the actual "writing" of the notes because I was a kid and it was something IHTD (I had to do) but it gave me a great foundation for being able to keep journals and write letters. Much of my youth was spent writing to friends that I made who lived a distance from me. My BFF, (best friend forever), Gloria lived in Maine and we wrote back and forth for years. When I made friends at Girl Scout camp one summer we would write to each other during the year making plans for the next summer at camp. The excitement of going to the mail box and finding a letter surpassed anything else in my life. I would take the letter and put it in my room unopened until I found a block of quiet time when I could read it in private treasuring each and every word. I would then immediately begin writing my response which could take days, weeks or months to finish. I would write pages and pages of written words that would only get sent when the volume of pages would not fit in an envelope. There were letters written on napkins, toilet paper and cloth if a thought would strike me and I didn't have any paper near by.
All that explains why I blog but I have totally gotten away from the point I was attempting to make.
Each day I receive an email from someplace that is called, "Brain Candy". These days I look forward to these ten to fifteen question quizzes as one thing in the day that will challenge my mind. (During this pandemic about the only challenges my mind gets is deciding what to eat next or what to watch on TV. I don't even have to think about WHEN I want to do those things because there is nothing else to compete for my attention.) The quizzes range from naming parts of the English language to identifying capital cities to finishing song lyrics. It changes daily. Yesterday's quiz was . . .
"How Many of These Text Abbreviations Do You Know?"
I actually surprised myself that I got nine out of the ten right. Mostly because of common sense and the fact that the quiz gives you three answers to choose from. But the quiz did get me thinking about how silly it is that we are now talking in letters rather than words. How LAZY can we get ?????
No comments:
Post a Comment