This Is How We Communicate Today

You send your friend a secret code of emojis including the twin girls dancing and the heart-eyeballs face and she knows just what you mean. 

You take a bite of a delicious sandwich and you offer a taste to the person next to you. You say, “Want some?” but your mouth is full, so it sounds like “Wom wom?”

You’re on G-chat with your sister, recounting the details of your most recent date. “It was delightful, but I don’t want to see him again,” you explain. 

You click “like” on your crush’s Facebook profile picture. Not the new one; the one from a few weeks back, which implies that you’re paying attention, or you’re flirting, or you’re bored. 

The person in front of you at the stoplight takes half a second too long to go on green, so you honk your horn and shake your head.

You try to entertain a baby and speak to it in words that are not English, words that are mostly just a high-pitched “Bloopy wop bleep bloo bloo.” 

You’re on the phone with your mother and she can’t understand you because you’re sobbing. When you catch your breath, you tell her that you’re happy, but stressed. 

You greet your co-workers every morning using their individual names because when someone greets you by your by name, it feels better and more sincere. 

You exchange confusing and angry text messages with someone you love and you screen-shot the conversation and send it to your best friend so that she can help you dissect it. 

You receive a SnapChat from someone you never talk to and lift your finger before the picture times out. 

You send an e-mail to the wrong person and you can feel your face getting red as your brain scrambles for ways to explain the flub. 

You sit next to someone you like and you laugh at all their jokes and make just the right amount of eye contact. You tell them they have good hair. 

You miss a call and receive a text message from someone you’re not ready to talk to. If you have to, you’ll say, “Weird! I never saw it!”

You take a selfie or copy & paste a quote and hope it gets your passive-aggressive point across. 

You speak directly. 

Your read carefully. 

You laugh. 

You joke.