Old School Texting

When we were preparing to move from our California home of sixteen years to Montana, I had to confront  downsizing, sorting, and getting rid of—so many things. One of the unexpected pleasures of this process, other than feeling much lighter, was finding forgotten treasures. In my mother’s cedar chest, I unearthed a few dozen pieces of folded and torn notebook paper. I was amazed to discover that I had saved the notes that my boyfriend had somewhat secretly sent to me in eighth grade. Now, I realize that you have to be of a certain age to understand this phenomenon, but, before smartphones and texting, we wrote paper notes and passed them down the row of school desks behind the teacher’s back. Often times, friends added a line or two before the note reached the desired recipient. Receiving a forbidden note was a sign that you were cool, so you stashed them in your pencil box, which for us, in the 70s, was usually a cigar box. The more notes, the more popular you were.

When I found this cache of memories (a few of which I’ve included for your enjoyment with the sender’s name omitted to protect the innocent) it occurred to me that with young love there is a need to communicate in a way that is not face-to-face. It’s safer and less embarrassing should your desired request be refused. It seems, in my day, it was a big deal to have agreement regarding handholding on the bus.

Today, there’s controversy concerning texting and smart phones—they’re addicting, alienating, the illuminated screens keep us up at night. Perhaps there is some truth in these worries if the instrument in question is overused. For me, my phone is a very handy-dandy tool, but in discovering the notes from my first romance, I found a shortcoming in texts, and to some extent in emails and social media posts: they can go away, vanish into thin air! Now the argument can be made that the same is true of ephemera. When friends in California had to evacuate their homes due to the horrific fires, they all grabbed the same things: pets, computers, important papers, photos, perhaps for some, long ago written love letters.

When our son was born in 1995, I printed his first email from his grandfather and pasted it into his baby book. When our daughter was given a cell phone, I printed out the first few heartfelt text exchanges between us and put them in her scrapbook. Why? Partly, because of the excitement of new technology, but mostly it was because I wanted my children to have something that was tangible, something they could see and touch, something that could spur good memories after thirty or forty years when I, too, will most likely vanish into thin air.