I love to text.  It has become my primary method of communication.  I am such an awkward phone talker that texting is the best thing that ever happened to me (and my friends). When my phone bill comes, I have 1400 texts and 12 phone minutes used.  The only problem I have is that I sound likea teenager in texts and emails.  OMG!  LOL!  They are fun to type, get the point across and have even worked their way into my speech. However, I have passed the age where that is acceptable. I don’t look my age, I don’t act my age but the fact is I am a grownup.  My birth certificate says so.  (And it becomes clear when I start lecturing friends and strangers – and our esteemed readers - to stop texting while driving. Please?)

I am increasingly aware of how juvenile I sound in speech and in emails.  I will say OMG (with appropriate emphasis on each letter) to a girlfriend and then realize that if anyone happens to be eavesdropping, they would probably whisper something rude and appropriate to their companion (can you believe that lady just said OMG?).  When friends reply to my emails, I glance down at the original email I wrote and am not amused with the various “yays,” “omgs” and “!!!!s” that fill my prose. If I must continue to pepper my texts, emails and speech with cute abbreviations, WTF is certainly my favorite.  If I’m being polite it becomes WTH (you can even take that as a “heck” if you’d like).

I read about 15blogs a day.  By the time I’m ready to comment, after having thought my position through, someone wittier than me has beat me to it and I’m not ready for the wrath of the Blog Forum Police to lecture me about reading all the pages before I comment.  So I lurk.  A lot.  And that’s how I found the secret, grownup version of my favorite text/IM term, “Whiskey Tango Foxtrot”, from the reader boards at Consumerist.com.  It took me a minute but I’ve always been fairly adept at figuring out abbreviations. I wish I could shout out (remember) the name of the poster and the post where I read this. Although it’s in the Urban Dictionary, I like to thank her for alerting me.  (I like “epic fail” too but that’s becoming very prevalent and of course, I’m way behind on what’s not cool anymore.  If you have time to waste, please view this excellent episode from South Park where Kyle has my same problem: http://www.southparkstudios.com/guide/310).

So I made a pledge to read and re-read my emails so that when I look back on them days or weeks later, I don’t sound like a 14-year-old girl but rather the professional woman who should occupy this headspace.  Later, Bitches!  (Sorry, can’t give that one up).