Predictive Text Predicament

I am going to start out by saying that I love text messaging. It is such a convenient way to communicate with people without really having to carry on a conversation. You can get someone a message by pushing a few buttons to type out a message, and then push "send" and your message is safely on it's way to the person of your choice.

It was last October while sitting at the Pumpkin Walk (please see post below) that my brothers, Brian and Sheldon, and my sister Liseanne and I, were trying to explain what a text message was to my 87 year old Grandma. She just couldn't fathom what we were talking about. So Brian handed her his phone, which was set on vibrate, and I sent him (her) a text message. She was in the middle of saying, "So how will I know when it..." when the phone vibrated in her hand and she about jumped right out of that camping chair she was sitting in. (Which says a lot, since it was next to impossible to get her out of those once she was sitting in one.) She was simply amazed at the technology (Napoleon's brother Kip would be proud.) Ah...such sweet memories of Grandma.

But as much as I love text messaging, I have to admit that I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with it when it comes to predictive text. For those of you who don't know what I'm talking about (I envy-no, covet- your QWERTY keyboards), it is when you are texting out a message (never while driving though, right?) and your phone, being the high-tech, super amazing piece of technology that it is, "guesses" the word that it thinks you want to say, and inserts it for you. It sounds all fine and dandy, doesn't it; one of those things that looks good on paper. But I find it on the "less effective" side of the communication scale when I'm trying to type something like "We are in need of more toilet paper," and it comes out as, "We ape go need me nose toilet rapes." It just seems to lose something in the translation, wouldn't you agree? And there's nothing quite like telling someone they made beautiful "bus abler" when you meant to say "cup cakes."

My all time peeve: Good=home=gone. It's all the same to the phone and it gets them mixed up repeatedly. There are quite a few little ones that drive me crazy as well: of=me, on=no, in=go, ice=had. And here is a good one. I texted out the word "bummer," and it inserted the word "atoned." Not quite the same meaning.

Sometimes predictive text can get you into a heap of trouble without even knowing if you don't proof read everything before you hit the "send" button. I learned this lesson the hard way.

I received a text from one of my friends who knew I had been sewing a very large king size quilt for another friend of mine. He texted me and asked me how the quilt was coming along. So I replied and said something along the lines of, "It's almost done! I just have to sew on the binding!" But thanks to my predictive text that obviously knew what I was REALLY trying to say, it sent, "It's almost done! I just have to sex on the binding!" After sending this text his intrest in my quilt shot up by 97% and he suddenly desired a quilt for himself.

Another example of Texts-Behaving-Badly...

Mike and I were on a bike ride in the early morning when we saw one of our friends in her driveway, so we stopped and said hello. We had our bike helmets on (being such good examples to our children) and our friend ( who shall remain anonymous for obvious reasons) started teasing Mike about how good he looked in his bike helmet, riding gloves, and sunglasses. We all laughed about it and went about our day, but apparently our friend started to worry that maybe Mike got the wrong impression, and she didn't want him to think that she had a crush on him or anything of the sort, heaven forbid! So in an attempt to straighten things out and make them better, she grabbed her phone and started texting. Here is what she wanted to say:

"Mike, I hope you know that I was in jest when I was teasing you the other day."

But this friend, like me, has predictive text that obviously knew what she REALLY wanted to say. The text read:

"Mike, I hope you know that I was in heat when I was teasing you the other day."

Ah... how I love it. It still makes me laugh.

Did Mike ever get the text? Sadly, no. Which actually bums (atones) me out a bit. Luckily for her, she proof read her message before she hit "send." But being the great sport that she is, she shared it with us anyway and let us all have a great laugh about it. Thank you, (insert friend's name), for letting us laugh with you. You just never know when those predictive texts are going to put you in heat.


"Yes, I love technology. But not as much as you, you see. But still, I love technology. Always and forever." ~Kip Dynamite