The Thumbies

I propose a new award ceremony be held each year to award large golden thumb-shaped statues to those teenaged children who write the best texts in various categories. As a pioneer in this area, I feel that my family and I should provide an example and a guide to scoring.

Today I accompanied my two teenaged girl-children to the mall. As a father who knows his place, I made myself scarce for an hour while they went shopping. After about 50 minutes I texted Em, "Are you about ready to go?" Her reply was:

"Yeah. . . "

Now you will recognize first thing that there should be a mandatory 0.5 deduction for answering the first time instead of having her phone turned off, or just ignoring me and pretending she had her phone turned off. But beyond that, it was a pretty good reply: ambiguous, tentative, almost completely lacking in helpful information. She avoided another mandatory 0.5 deduction by not following up with another explanatory text or (this would have been a 1.o deduction) calling me.

Notice the use of ellipsis at the end of her monosyllabic reply. While not adopted by the International Teenage Text Governing Board as a required textpiece, it certainly earns some stylistic points. It actually implies that there might be more information coming, thus raising some questions about whether the parent should wait, or try to call, or send another text inquiry. It kept me quiet for another 5 minutes. Very good, really.

I believe that the reply could only have been made stronger had she chosen

"Uh. . ."

instead. It would have reduced the actual text length by 2 characters, and eliminated the marginally useful affirmative connotation that "yeah. . ." carries with it. Consider that "Uh. . . " could mean anything from "I'm standing behind you, Dad," to "I'm sitting in the Mall Security Office right now" or even "There is a live bear chasing me past The Gap." The only real information it carries is acknowledgment of the parental unit's text being received, (something my phone does automatically, so there's really no use in it) and a marginal assent to parental authority, since it does constitute, technically, a reply.

Overall, I would rate Em's performance a strong 8.9, and I believe we will certainly be hearing more of this young texter in the future. One syllable at a time.