The Texting Bridge

This is courtesy of a one Buzz Carlson, a native of Kenai, Alaska. We once had a conversation that went something like this: 
 

“So, Buzz, let’s pretend that you are kind of interested in a girl.”

“Okay,” he responded.

“You text her to kind of get things going, right? So what goes through your mind when she texts you back?”

“Elation.”

Buzz has just adequately put a cap on the feeling that people, young and infatuated, get when an initial contact is made. But it’s a process that Buzz went on to teach me. 

First, there is a great deal of trepidation. What if she thinks you are a creeper? What if she doesn’t like you? What if she doesn’t text back?

But then she texts back. Initially, it’s elation that is felt. But then the foreplay begins, and there is an expectation to be “charming via text” as a popular movie describes it.

I told him that this is very similar from the woman’s perspective. In my case, the biggest thing for me is the unspoken expectation to be witty, charming and memorable. Please keep in mind that this is all done via text.

Each person that reads this more likely than not has had an experience texting where something was interpreted terribly wrong leaving both parties with on overall feeling of awkward.

Buzz then, in a stroke of pure genius, compared the experience to crossing a rickety old bridge. You know the one he means. The one that stretches a mile in between two mountains separating the thousand-foot death drop into the rushing river below. What is it made of? Rope, wood and nails, most of which are now missing. Rickety? Yes. Dangerous? Yes. Terrifying? Yes.

Texting can be just as flirtatious of a brush with death as crossing this bridge. But as Buzz Carlson found, the successful crossing of this bridge allows you to step into new territory. Maybe you’ll even get a date out of it.