I promise this is the last giddy Lt. Hightower-I’m-dating-a-giant-lalalala post for a while. Actually, it’s not so much about him as about my latest bad habit.

You know what? I feel like each relationship sinks me down to new levels of depravity and this one is no exception. I’ve turned into a motherfuckin’ texter!! In my defense, I’m going to state right upfront that I NEVER use texting code whatsoever (like “u” for “you” etc.) and I am scrupulous about grammar. Down to adding in the apostrophes when necessary.

The thing is that I don’t know exactly what urgent messages I’m sending to him all the time. I can’t even pinpoint when the texting thing got so out of hand. Oh wait, I do. It’s when I was reading on www.consumerist.com about rate hikes in texting fees and a little lightbulb went off in my head like “durrr, we have to pay for texts??” Except I didn’t know how long we had been texting for at that point, though Cingular later informed me it was 1337 texts previous to said epiphany (sent AND received, shit, I’m not that clingy). Readers, this is what comes of mingling with a younger man. These whippersnappers pull you into this, this cutting edge technology, and then you figure out T9 and from there it’s a short hop, skip and a jump to sending him a picture of your legs up on your desk in a pair of knee high boots.

Recently I was reading a rant by someone on a message board regarding the rudeness of individuals who insist upon texting even while interacting with others and I got all indignant being like “Oh, I would NEVER do that!” Except for the time I was on a conference call into HQ about insurance and I texted my way through most of it. Or like, last weekend when my Beaker and Bunsen were dropping me off at Midway and I was sitting in the back of their tragically desi guido car and texting away while they blithered on about this and that. And then my sister actually swivelled around from the front and in a totally momish voice was like are you motherfrocking texting That Boy??? (my whole family refers to Hightower as “That Boy” or “That Overly Tall Boy”). And I was sitting there with a look of adolescent guilt on my face trying desperately to cover the mouthpiece with my thumb, but too late, Hightower’s Ding! of responding text came too soon (“I got to fly home on first class hahahaha!”). 

At which point my sister harrumphed disgustedly, turned around in her seat and then fixed me with a caustic eye in the mirror. “This is what comes of dating a teenager, you know!” she noted to me, “he’s younger than Beaker and now you’ve been pulled into texting. What next? At least he got his braces off before you met up.”   

Actually, he had gotten his braces taken off the week before and I’ll say that his new teeth looked really superb. But I swear, he is totally not 15.

The thing is, I don’t know why it’s so necessary to text. I do know that today I was driving past the Walt Disney Concert Hall and I snapped a quick photograph for him. Or sometimes I just want to say “PS, I hate you…no I don’t” or as a sample Hightower text that has now lost all sense of context and now seems mildly inappropriate, he just wants to ask me “Yeah, but how do you keep it moist?”

Those are words to live by.