How often do you send a text and then realize what you’d meant to say isn’t actually what you sent?
Misspelled words and autocorrect are a disastrous combination that can bring about either funny or embarrassing outcomes. A case in point is the exchange between a friend and I that suggested we are a great tram. (That should have read ‘team’). So, going forward we will always be working together as a tram because it does have a bit of a ring to it and who is going to argue with a tram?
Much more embarrassing was a message I sent to someone once that should have read ‘Hi Ang’ (I have changed the name to protect their identity). Instead, it read ‘Hi Big Ang’ and, to this day, I have no idea how that extra word got in there, but you can imagine the mortified apologizing that I had to do afterwards. Ang no longer sends me Christmas cards, by the way.
The problem is that I don’t have the thumbs for texting. My thumbs, for many decades, have just sort of hung out at the ends of my hands next to the other, more useful digits. Never did they expect to be thrown into active duty and it came as a shock to them.
Which leaves me pecking away at my phone’s nanoscopic keyboard with my two forefingers, a painfully laborious process that doesn’t yield any more accurate results than if I had used my texting-challenged thumbs.
I understand that I am in the minority as most people – especially those under 30 – seem to have undergone some kind of genetic manipulation to allow their thumbs to complete acrobatic maneuvers that convert magically on their screens to flawless text. How I envy their dexterity.
Doing a bit of research, I found out that the world’s fastest texter is Marcel Fernandes, who set the record in 2014 at the age of 16 by texting 25 words in 18.19 seconds without using autocorrect.
Curious to see how far off that record I might be, I decided to time myself texting 25 words and am pleased to announce it took me only 34 seconds. Granted, I only texted words with one or two letters and may have repeated the same word over and over a few times, but the phone didn’t have to correct me once.
Watch out Marcel, I am coming for that title!
by angela lovell 