Thinking about the different love languages, as rob is alluding to in his post, has got me thinking about my texting habits since texting is a key way that I keep in touch with people who are important to me.

SO does brief daily ‘good morning’ text chats with a few close friends. And also spends a few minutes every morning on Facebook sending happy birthday wishes to everyone in his friends list whose birthday is that day. I personally hate those Facebook happy birthdays so I have set my birthday as hidden. Having someone I haven’t interacted with in the past year wishing me a happy birthday just because my name popped up on a list seems trite to me rather than heartfelt so I’d rather save them the unappreciated effort and me the time it takes to read them and click the like or love button.

For me a much more natural situation is the running text conversations I have with 4 people. (My sister and 3 close friends). These conversations tend to be ongoing and happen throughout the day pretty much every day. We all know pretty much everything that’s going on in each other’s lives. They tend to include a fair amount of pictures (omg, eleanor (cat) looks so cute right now doing blah blah blah or I’m so frustrated with work IT issues that I’d rather be emptying the dishwasher (with a pic of the full dishwasher that I’m about to empty)) but also just random thoughts on an article I read that I think will be interesting to the person or venting about a work annoyance or sharing a work success with someone who will be happy for me. I suppose for some other people this sounds like a weak substitute for more in person communication but for me, a moderate introvert who doesn’t easily make new friends, it works well. Especially since of the 4 people only one is local. Two are in southern CA and one is in Kansas City. All four have been important to me for a long time and have been a part of my life when key difficulties happened and they were there to support me just as I’ve been there for them in their difficult times. The most recently acquired friend became my friend 13 years ago. The others I’ve known for 23, 32, and 54 years. (54 because my sister has known me since pretty much the day I was born. She didn’t like me initially and in fact ran away from home shortly after I came home from the hospital, announcing to my mother before she left that she was going to go live with our aunt in a different state because of me. 13 blocks from our house she was noticed by a cop who thought it odd that a 4 year old girl seemed to be on a serious mission. Fortunately she was naive enough to get duped by him telling her ‘Kansas is a long way from Denver. Let’s go talk to your mom and if she says it’s ok I’ll drive you.’ We’ve since reconciled.)

I suppose if we still lived in the pre-text world I’d be using the phone to keep in touch with these people but I prefer this. I’m curious whether I’m unique or if others of you find text as the best way to keep in touch with those who you are closest to.