Some useful advice on things you shouldn’t text

Now guess what's Number 1 on the list...

Somehow I’ve become a member of the AARP without ever deciding to do so (which come to think of it is exactly the same way I started a family) and totally forget I’m an AARP member until they send me one of their thoughtful emails designed to scare the living shit out of old people.

It seems to me old people develop one of two attitudes:

1. I never thought I’d live this long anyway, so why not go cliff diving in Acapulco?

2. I’m scared of dying so I won’t do anything even slightly risky like eating dinner after 5 PM and even though I technically can’t live forever, if my life is boring enough, it will feel like forever.

The AARP’s target demographic appears to be the people in Group 2 and if you don’t believe me (and with my track record I wouldn’t blame you) take a look at some of the articles they sent me in their latest email: 

• High Cholesterol? Skip This type of Coffee

• The Financial Penalty of Losing Your Spouse

• Eye Symptoms You Should Never Ignore

And to make this litany of Things You Should Fret About even more annoying, the AARP consistently refuses to write the kind of article I’d actually find useful, like:

• Time to Move Out: Six Tips for Informing Your Children the Free Ride is Over

• The Most Obvious Symptom of a Viagra Overdose

• The Best Excuses for Not Wearing a Hearing Aid and Forcing Family Members to Burst a Lung Trying to Tell You the TV’s Volume is Way Too Fucking Loud

In their latest The Sky is Falling and We’ve Tested the Best Helmets for Seniors email, the AARP has identified 13 Things You Should (Almost) Never Put in a Text and to find out what those things are they went to etiquette expert Lizzie Post (the great-great granddaughter of Emily Post) and it turns out there’s also something called the Emily Post Institute which sounds like a place you could have your husband committed if he says “pull my finger” one too many times.

(And frankly, once is one too many.)

Time out for an Emily Post sidebar…

According to the internet, Emily Post got married in 1892 and divorced in 1905 because her husband Edwin had affairs with chorus girls and actresses and became a target of blackmail, but I got this off Wikipedia so who knows if it’s actually true because I’m under the impression that if I could summon up the energy I could get on Wikipedia and say that Edwin also won the Cy Young Award, took a Silver Medal in Mixed Pairs Ice Dancing in the Stockholm Olympics and invented the light bulb.

Also, Britannica.com says the Posts got divorced in 1906 not 1905, so you definitely can’t believe everything you read on the internet, including about 62% of this story.

But if Edwin actually had affairs with chorus girls and actresses and then someone tried to blackmail him, that sounds like a pretty good story and I’d like to hear the details because maybe Amber Heard’s great-great grandmother took a dump in Edwin’s bed, but the Wikipedia author didn’t have any more to say about it because he and/or she was so eager to move on to the fascinating tale of how Emily Post became our National Know-It-All.  

Google Edwin Post (which I did because I’m nothing if not easily distracted) and eventually you might find an article on findagrave.com (and I didn’t make that up, but seems like an indispensable website if you ever get a job as Dr. Frankenstein’s assistant) and it says Edwin Post Jr.’s parents got a divorce because of his father’s “excessive philandering.”

A description which seems to suggest a certain amount of philandering is socially acceptable and if Emily Post weren’t excessively dead I’m pretty sure she’d have an opinion on that and it would really help the rest of us if knew just how much philandering is OK.  

And now, 13 Things You Should (Almost) Never Put in a Text with a few observations of my own:

1. Don’t report a death

I have no idea how this got to be Number 1 on the list, because in my mind the Number 1 thing you shouldn’t text is definitely a “dick pic” so I’m guessing I won’t be getting a LinkedIn job offer from the Emily Post Institute in my next batch emails.

And the fact that “dick pics” didn’t make the AARP’s list at all confirms my suspicion that they’re failing to deal with the issues that matter most to real people.

Anyway…

They advise you to report a death in person and maybe that’s because you want to see if the person who just found out their rich grandmother died, does a double-fist pump and shouts, “YEEEESSSS!”

2. Don’t end a relationship

Wrong, wrong, wrong.

Nothing says I no longer give a shit like breaking up in a text, so I disagree with Lizzie and the AARP on this rule, but they also advise you to never use the phrase “It’s not you, it’s me” which I happen to agree with because if you think about it, nobody breaks up with someone who’s really fantastic, so just go ahead and rip that emotional Band-Aid off and text the phrase:

“I’ve thought about it and it’s definitely you.”

3. Don’t express unrequited feelings of love

Probably a good idea because the next step down this Undesired Romance Road is one of those dick pics we discussed earlier because for some reason us guys think women want to see our junk and I’m pretty sure they don’t or else we wouldn’t turn off the lights before having sex.

I’m not sure what it says about me, but if I ever woke up and had magically turned into a woman (according to Hollywood this mind-body transfer thing happens all the time, like in Freaky Friday, so I really can’t believe the AARP has neglected to warn me about it) I’d definitely be a lesbian.

If you think about it too much – and I obviously have – I’m such a committed heterosexual that in the right circumstances, I’d be gay.

4. Go easy on ALL CAPS

Everybody that was born after the Wright Brothers took that first airplane flight at Kitty Hawk (I haven’t heard if they lost their luggage, but I’ll bet their flight was delayed) already knows this so the CAPS advice is clearly aimed at Geezers with Flip Phones who still send texts by punching a number and then selecting one of three letters that each number represents.

Sending a text in this manner takes longer than any other form of written communication with the possible exception of carving stuff on stone tablets which really slows things down and leads to editing and it’s a little known fact that the original version of the Ten Commandments was supposed to start out:

“Thou Shalt Have No Other Gods Before Me, LMAO.”

5. Avoid Sarcasm

Reeeally?

6. Understand emojis

For instance: for some reason the eggplant emoji stands for a penis (and once again us guys are giving ourselves way too much credit and in many cases a baby carrot emoji would be more appropriate) so if you want to invite your minister or rabbi or Boy Scout Troop Leader over for a dinner of eggplant parmigiana, you probably ought to skip the emojis and spell that out in words unless you actually want to have sex with your minister, rabbi or Boy Scout Troop Leader.

(Not that there’s anything wrong with that.) 

7. Be wary of abbreviations

The examples they give are LOL (Laughing Out Loud) and TBH (To Be Honest), but technically, those aren’t abbreviations, they’re “initialisms” which I didn’t know was a thing until I looked it up. Also, “acronyms” are first initials that form pronounceable words like SNAFU (Situation Normal All Fucked Up) and “anachronisms” are the people who read AARP articles and find them helpful.  

8. Don’t write an opus

OK, I have to take that last sentence back because it turns out “TL; DR” means (Too Long; Didn’t Read) which I didn’t know and if he was still alive and owned an iPhone, I’d send that text to Herman Melville.

That’s a literary joke based on the premise that you know Herman wrote Moby-Dick and my copy is 1,011 pages long because they included a List of Plates and Acknowledgements, a Biographical Note about Herman Melville, an essay on the composition of the book, an introduction, a note on the text, a bibliography and you’ve got to wade through 92 pages of this stuff before you get to the actual book and 92 pages into my preferred reading material, James Bond has already banged two chicks, survived a shark attack and is hot on the trail of the Evil Mastermind who is also an Organizational Genius because who else could get a nuclear missile launch site built inside a dormant volcano?

Several months ago my mom needed a couple toilets replaced and the work is still being held up by a team of plumbers who are happy to give you their cell phone numbers because they have no intention of answering if you call.

Dr. No wouldn’t stand for that shit.

9. Watch typos

My phone likes to guess what word I’m attempting to type and if it disagrees with the word I eventually complete, feels free to replace it with the word it thinks I should’ve used, so if you ever get a text from me that says we’re breaking up and you react badly to that news, I’ll blame the people at Samsung.  

10. Don’t complain about your boss

Got it.

11. Don’t spread gossip

Y’know who likes to spread gossip?

My boss.  

12. Leave out personal data

Geez, thanks for telling me this because I was just about to text my Social Security and bank account numbers to the people who call me and want to help pay off my college loan and they must be wonderful, trustworthy people because I didn’t actually go to college.

13. Consider political ramifications

Too late.

That particular ship sailed in 1976 when I drew my first political cartoon, so I don’t find this piece of advice overly useful, but will eagerly await my next AARP email because I really need some information on Viagra and the main symptom of an overdose.

On the other hand, now seems like an excellent time to take a dick pic.

(OK, after re-reading this essay and it’s numerous off-color references I now realize the AARP article I could actually use is: Things You Should Never Blog About.)