Am I Getting Old? (Part 1: Texting)

I used to be very anti-cell phone. All I ever heard for years is how I needed one, and how I was inconveniencing my friends by refusing to get one.

If my friends wanted to call me when I wasn't home, they could either leave a voice mail on my land line, or they could call me at work. Not exactly the grave injustice they made it out to be, as I was still very much reachable.

But, as much as they lamented it, I loved having the feeling that I couldn't be reached every second of every day. And thus, I remained without a cell phone for the first 28 years of my life.

Then the iPhone hit, and - as the tag line suggested - it changed everything. I bought an iPod Touch in early 2008, and although it had most of what I needed, when the iPhone finally made it's long-awaited debut in Canada five months later, I couldn't help but think 'man, I could have all the functions of the Touch, without needing a wi-fi connection all the time to do it...' Plus, back then the Phone had features that the Touch didn't.  Like Bluetooth, and GPS, and a camera.  I was able to resist for a year, but eventually I gave in to temptation.

This is how I was introduced into the world of texting.

Prior to this, my lone experience with texting people had been the one time that I had tried on my buddy's phone around 2003.  This was long before the days of touch screens or even full QWERTY keyboards. Three letters were assigned to each number on the keypad, and you slowly cycled through them until you got to the one that you wanted. It was taking me about 30 seconds to complete a single word, and by the time I had finished my message, I knew I was dealing with the stupidest thing in the entire universe.  This was not progress.  This was a step backwards in terms of technology.  And I swore a blood oath to myself that day that I would never touch another text message again, as long as I lived and breathed.

I stood by, as in the subsequent years, it's popularity only grew. I watched as my good friend Art went from condemning the technology with the same disdain as I did, to becoming the biggest texter in the world overnight. I shrugged it off, assuming that it had to do with the teenage women with whom he was cavorting with at the time more than anything else. But he wasn't the only one. Texting was taking over, and I still didn't understand it.

Then I got my hands on the iPhone. If Art had done a 180º on texting overnight, then I did mine in the span of one hour. Quickly forgotten was the old, tedious methods of entering text - replaced now with a simple and intuitive touch screen - and since I was always much better at writing than I was at talking (especially on the phone), suddenly I had a whole new means in which to communicate with people. I was ashamed to admit it, but I was converted almost instantly.

But that's not what this is about. No, this is about etiquette. Because if there's one thing that I struggled with, early on, it was how to not become the one thing that I hated more than anything else. How to avoid turning into the one person that I knew I could easily become.  The darkness I knew lurked just beneath the surface that had kept me scared of the cell phone for all those years.

The person that paid more attention to their cell phone than to the people that they were actually with.

I had watched it happen to Art. One day we'd be standing there talking, engrossed in our conversation with one another, when suddenly, next thing I knew, I'd be talking to him, and his face was glued to the screen of his cell phone. I called him on it a few times, to which his response was always the same: "I'm listening. I can do more than one thing at the same time, you know." Which to me, was him completely missing the point. I wasn't questioning whether or not he could, but rather whether or not he should.

I don't doubt that my dentist could talk on the phone while filling a cavity for me either. But it's nice to sit in that chair and feel like you have his complete and undivided attention. Art and I weren't talking about anything important, sure, but it still made me feel like I was less important to him at that moment, than the $100 piece of electronics in his hand. And I felt, that if his text conversation was so much more important than the one he was having with me, then why wasn't he calling this person and having the conversation over the phone?  How could it be that important if both sides were willing to wait the extra 20 seconds that it would take to type a response?

(Before I go on, I think it's only fair to mention that this is Art circa 2007-08, he has since changed greatly in how he balances typing on his cell phone and dealing with someone in person at the same time.)

Which makes me wonder: what is the priority for different social situations? And how long have they been in place? For example, I would consider the order as such (from highest priority, to least): in person, on the phone, via text, via email, via letter. I'm not saying a letter is less important than an email - not at all, I consider a letter much more personal - but rather that a person doesn't expect a response right away if they wrote you a letter, so you don't have to rush out and answer it that very second. With an email, the person might expect an answer right away, but obviously not that quickly otherwise it would have required a phone call to make sure they got the answer right then and there. See what I'm saying?

That said, as much as I consider an in-person encounter to take precedence over everything, that's not really true, is it? I mean, if you're talking with someone in their living room, and the phone rings, chances are that the person will answer it, and chances are that you won't be offended if they do. But was this always the case? Did a ringing phone always make it ok to pause a conversation and answer it, or was it considered rude at first too, much like I consider stopping a conversation to answer a text rude right now. Did it slowly become more and more acceptable over time, much like it seems that texting is today, or was it always such a cool technology (especially when it was first introduced) that a phone call has always taken precedence? With the way texting is going, could a day come when a person is talking on the phone, feels the vibration of an incoming text, and actually puts the person on hold in order to answer it? I know I've seen people use speaker phone to text while they talk on the phone, so really, it can't be that far off.

I guess what I'm getting at is, am I the old guy sitting on his rocking chair, yelling at the kids to get off my lawn? Talking about how 'back when I was your age…' or 'I had respect for…'? Or am I right, and people are just losing their sense of social grace the easier that it becomes to do so. I mean, was Art right to text and talk at the same time, because that's the way society is heading, or is Randy right, when he gives me an evil eye for even glancing at my phone when the two of us hang out together. I'm obviously not as uptight about it as Randy, but I'm definitely closer to his way of thinking than I am to Art's. (Again… Art's former way of thinking).

I don't want to be the old guy that doesn't accept change. I always thought that I was the young, hip, open-minded guy, that was cool with whatever trends came and went over the years. I never want to be the old dinosaur that 'doesn't understand the kids these days.' That said, I also don't want people texting the whole time that I'm trying to have a conversation with them either.