Text Messaging: Communication enhancement or act of passive aggression?

At work today, I was emailing with a friend. I mentioned that I do not like text messaging. Her response to me was, "yeah i hate texting. it's very passive-aggressive. " The reason I don't like texting is because I feel like if you have to tell someone something, just call them, that's what a cell phone is for PHONING. I had never thought of texting as a passive-aggressive activity. So, I have been pondering that thought the rest of the afternoon. Perhaps she is right, maybe that is why many people choose using their thumbs to communicate instead of their voices.

Due to the fact that our household is a non-texting one, I thought I would check and see what I could find online about texting behavior. I found that yes, indeed, it is being viewed as a form of passive aggression. I have read where relationships have moved from phone calls to entirely texting. Texting allows the people involved to become disconnected as it removes all physical interaction which removes any chance of intimacy to occur. Just as online relationships are considered "virtual" because they are not real, neither are those which are primarily composed of texts.

I recall being out with a group and someone decided to start texting a friend they felt may be having a rough evening to check on them. Obviously phoning was just too much work, they couldn't be bothered to care that much. How much more would a thirty second phone call have meant than thirty minutes of texting? It reminds me of the old Hallmark motto, "When you care enough to send the very best..." The very best is you, actual interaction, not hiding behind a screen. Of course, people could say, "well, Shell, you are interacting via a screen right now, aren't you being hypocritical?" Perhaps I am which is why I am going to go interact with with some live people now.

What are your thoughts? Texting, is it a good thing or out to get us?

Childhood Remembrance

Have you ever looked back at your childhood and realized that those things you most disliked are some of your fondest memories now? When I was young, my dad would take me out to my grandparents' farm on most Saturday mornings. He would go out to the woods to cut down trees to use in our wood burning furnace at home, and I would be left with my grandmother and the aunts and uncle who were still living at home. My grandmother had 13 kids, she had a lot of work to do, so there was no time to spend playing with a young child. I do remember watching as she pulled the wet clothes through the hand wringer on her old washing machine. I recall going out to the chicken coop to care for those feathery beasts. And I remember that she always had huge meals on the big kitchen table ready for the guys when they came in from working at noon. I never looked forward to those trips, my aunts tended to be mean as they liked to lock me out of the house a lot, and I was a very shy child who wasn't comfortable around a lot of people. The other day I was driving home from work along a stretch of two lane country road and I realized one of the reasons I love our new house so much. It is because every day when I come home, I am reminded of the drive I used to take with my dad out to the farm as a child. Turns out, what I so greatly disliked has returned to bring me joy both in my remembrance of the past and in my present.