The good old ways

I hate texting.  As a writer, I should like the written word, but texting?  I can't stand it!  Due to my profession, I know just how hard it is to express my thoughts and feelings to those who cannot see my body language or hear the tone of my voice (thank heaven for italics, in that connection!).  So much crucial information is contained in those components of speech, but texting conveys none of them.  How much better, therefore, is the simple, old-fashioned phone call.  And speaking of old-fashioned, none of todays social media can compare to the ancient technology called 'the pub'.  Not that I ever had a hangout like the famous bar in the TV show, Cheers, but I love the non-alcoholic version of it—Starbucks—and spend much time there, writing and chatting with other creative people.  I will never know as many people there as I do on facebook or twitter—but the connections are deeper.  For example, I have 132 friends on facebook, but only two of them remembered my birthday (the good thing is, I now have to remember just two birthdays myself.  Lol).  But when I got my coffee at Starbucks that morning, someone had scribbled 'Happy Birthday' on my cup (plus I didn't have to pay for it, yay!).  Or more recently, I asked the folks on twitter for some feedback, but out of my 7,347 followers not even one responded. The measly ten or twenty  people I know at the coffee shop were far more forthcoming.  Texting might be practical in certain situations, and social media is a lot of fun—I truly love facebook and twitter—but the forms of human interaction that have been with us pretty much from the beginning of time will continue to nurture the soul better, I believe, than any of the high-tech stuff we might yet come up with. :-)