Friday, January 4, 2019

Group Text PSA


This “conversation”, which occurred in November 2018, shall serve as a public service announcement about the need to avoid group texting unless absolutely necessary, like, if you are a chaperone in the marching band and need all students come to the busses at once.  Except for that, don’t do group text.

You can tell this is a text conversation by the appalling lack of concluding punctuation. 


Husband:  Here is our thanksgiving dinner!  (with photo of turkey in freezer)

Older Daughter:  What dish should I bring?
(Oh, happy day! She really is an adult.  Only a true adult would offer, without being asked, to bring a dish.)

Son: Are we carpooling?

(There followed a discussion about whether they could travel to our house together, which meant lots of annoying pings, because Group Text.)

Older Daughter: No one has answered yet what dish I should bring

Son: You should bring my plates!

(For Rosh Hashanah, Older Daughter had hosted the meal at her house. More evidence of adulting! She threatened to charge her brother $5 for the meal if he didn’t bring something to the meal.  He brought garlic bread on two plates, but left his plates at her house.)

Husband: How about cranberry relish

OD: Ok, and no
  
Husband:  What does that mean

Husband: Fine.  I’m charging you $5

OD: I’m not making a dish that I don’t like

YD:  Stuffing?

OD: I could bring cranberry in a can

Me:  Yes.
(I immediately regretted this response.  Son is old enough to contribute something to the dinner, too, and he should be the one bringing the cranberry in a can, because he has fewer resources than OD.)

Me:  You could bring dinner rolls

OD: Ok!  Spicy dinner rolls

Husband:  Yeah.  Kung pao dinner rolls.  With candy on top.

OD: And shrimp

Son, fearing that one of his favorite parts of the Thanksgiving dinner would not be available:  Should I bring some actual rolls?

Husband:  How about egg rolls?

OD: How about jelly rolls?

Me:  You people.  SMH

YD:  What does that mean?

Son:    “shaking my head”.  I just looked it up

OD: Shake my hamster

YD:  Spoke many Horatios!

OD: Saucy mother’s headache

Son:  single-male household

OD: Smashing more heads

Me:    GROUP TEXT SHOULD BE USED SPARINGLY

Son:    Dad started it!

YD:  Tools this powerful should only be in the hands of people like us!

Husband:  Ya scunners!  I’ve decided we’re having borscht for thanksgiving and that’s that.
(And now the group text conversation has deteriorated into references to the Mac Nac Feegle of the Terry Pratchett books, in which “ship” means “sheep”.)

YD:  Shouldn’t we be havin’ the ships for Thanksgiving with these wee dafties?

Husband:  And snails!  Roasted snails with lots of garlic

YD:  and beef Wellington!

Husband:  And deep fried stoat!

YD:  I think Mom is too appalled to respond.

Husband:  Mom is talking with Uncle J.

Yes, in fact, I was trying to have an actual vocal conversation with my actual brother on my cell phone, while enduring the constant pinging of the group text conversation.

Let’s take a vote:  should group text be outlawed, except for marching band?



4 comments:

Sandy D. said...

Going by experiences with Roy's family, definitely not in a family conversation with a group of people over the age of 50. But hearing your experience, I'd revise that to family conversations with a group of anyone.

Bibliomama said...

No, because - obviously you know this - this is a thing of frigging beauty. Especially the shared book vocabulary. I was stuck in a baseball mom one that made me want to kill myself once, though. It's very situation-specific.

Anonymous said...

What is it with group texts that makes them seem to dissolve into wonderful nonsense?

Karen (formerly kcinnova) said...

That was hilarious! And yes, group texts can rapidly become incredibly annoying and should be used sparingly. I had to ask my husband's sisters to keep me off the list when he should be included instead (I was working and it's really hard to work with all that pinging).