More Than Words

I could be dangerous. I could exploit the shallow depths of fragile egos, crystalline-like, reed-thin, the delicacy of the nuance of language, gestures...freaking emoticons.

Where was this technology shit when I was zooming girls in high school?

I have always had the writer's preferred stance of hiding behind the ink, usually, or at least particularly early in a relationship. I could be frank, charming. I could be descriptive, flowing, alliterative. I could align with Billy Shakespeare, Faulkner. I could even throw in random T.S. Eliot if I felt probing some uncharted depths.

Firing away in my clutches, my brain screaming "No wonder you got a D+ in handwriting in 3rd grade"...I first had to make sure my thoughts were even legible. Let alone grasped. But if I could craft the right phrases, capture the way a girl burst like an embolism inside my brain, then I at least got a thank you. A smile. Victory for me was in the smallest gesture of thanks because frankly the writings never got past the 10th or 11th grade athletes. Words are one thing in the quiet of an evening, but they don't drive cars or score touchdowns.

Many times they were scribbled extemporaneously, my favorite kind...the way somebody looked as they sat in front of me; a color of eyes, or something unique that was nearby and could frame a reference. Passed hastily, the 3x5 card looked like so many scratches from some ink-taloned bird, but every once in awhile they would get me a glance that indicated I had perforated the veneer.

Forget the phone.

God, how long was it before somebody discovered "Call Waiting?". Way past my youth. Hours, or so it seemed, hearing the busy signal as I only grew more and more distraught. My sister, younger than me by two years and fourteen times more popular monopolized calls like a charity phone drive.

"Get off the phone!" I was likely expecting a call. As if she would call. But she might. And if not, I would call her.

And what would await me? Busy tones.

Christ.

So, let's just say I had a cell phone. Forget instant messaging. Forget webcams. Forget a live conversation. Give me a text message and I would have dominated my youth. Domination.

In a world where my Facebook status is my clothing, positioned for the world to see, I wonder where the notes have fallen. Where the whispered hushes of small snippets of conversation occur? Where the original love poem was scribed? Why we say more with our thumbs than stealing a few moments to write it down?

I would own teenage boyhood, if I had all these damn tools that they have today.

But I guess in having the ability to communicate on every detail (why didn't you IM back in three nano-seconds), we've created even higher expectations and cannot allow the tenuous roots of budding emotions to be absorbed.

Maybe there will be a backlash of sorts, of girls wanting to have those gaps in communications, those delays in discussions. Time to sort things out. Time to respond. I can only imagine the days like those in "Pride and Prejudice" (a pretty damn good movie who's star character is the language expressed between actors) when days and weeks would fall between those in love. Maddening. Exciting. Unknowing.

Perhaps I don't regret growing up in an age where my emotions were on display all the time. Perhaps I learned some things along the way about how people fall in love, over time, over distance, and not online.

Forgive me eHarmony.

Proper writing, full sentences, no abbreviations. Words poured onto a page as though pricked direct from a heart thumping in anticipation of their effect. Words meant only for another's eyes. And nobody else.

And thus, as I write this for hopefully a few people to see, I become the full hypocrite, for without today's technology I'd be merely thinking this in my head.

And wondering why my teenage boy would sit staring at the phone that might never ring.