I was both an early and a late adapter for text messaging.  I wasn’t the first of my friends to start, but I definitely text all the time now.

Back when texting first came into the world, I mocked it.  I said, why not just make a quick phone call?  How annoying to type in all those letters?  Then I discovered predictive text, or T9 as Sprint (my phone carrier) called it.  I went from 10 texts a month to over 1000, and realized I should sign up for the unlimited pack. 

I texted all the time.  I texted without looking, back in the days when I didn’t have a touch screen.  I (admittedly) texted while driving, though let’s say I was always stopped at a light or whatnot.  I texted friends who were sitting right next to me, and I definitely annoyed people (still do) texting when I should be talking with the actual people who are in my presence.

I even started sending texts when picking a friend up (say, at their house) rather than calling.  A quick text “here” that they would receive rather than having to answer the phone.  Again, something I originally mocked, and then embraced.

Then I got a touch screen phone.  My current phone is the HTC Hero, and is a touch screen.  I would like to go on the record and say that I hate touch screen typing.  However, I have overcome it’s limitations (having to look at the screen rather than feel the numbers) and continued to text with a vengeance.  I use one finger on the tiny picture of a keyboard.

I hear there is a technology for voice-to-text.  You speak into your phone and it sends what you say as a text message.  I imagine it’s almost like making a phone call but slightly more challenging. 

When I got engaged I sent out some mass text messages.  I texted Leslie first, who responded, WHY ARE YOU SENDING THIS VIA TEXT MESSAGE?  The answer, it was FASTER.  And it JUST happened.

Here’s the issue.  The conversations are stored together, and once they reach a certain point, my phone finds it impossible to delete them.  My text conversation between Chris and I (my highest, of course) was over 2000 messages long.  With another friend, over 1000, and with several other friends, over 100.  When I first got my phone I stayed on top of the deleting, but I evidently got lazy.  What’s more, my phone was NO LONGER able to delete the messages and would crash instead.  It also was running the messaging program very slowly.  And then yesterday I realized that I might have MISSED getting a bunch of messages—most definitely some from Chris and Leslie and who knows who else?  IT WAS A DISASTER.

I finally realized I should google the problem.  I don’t know why I waited so long to use google on my problem.  And guess what…

There’s an app for that.  In fact there are a variety of apps for that.  Apps that delete your text messages that your phone can’t on its own.

So now I’ve deleted MOST of my messages, in fact, now my phone will automatically delete all but the last 100 messages. 

Will I start receiving all my text messages?  That I cannot say.  I certainly hope so.  I guess that’s the issue with this fancy new technology, it just doesn’t always work. 

So, if you have texted me and I didn’t respond, I probably didn’t get it.  You know otherwise I always have to have the last word! (Or don’t know when to quit…whatever…)

What are your thoughts on texting? Do you prefer phone calls, emails, texting, smoke signals, or what?