Emoti-Confusion A.K.A. Potty-Con

    So this may be a little off topic, but I thought it was necessary to give you a broader idea of just what my family has to tolerate. And I guess, you could say these are some of their Did this really just happen? moments when dealing with me.
Let me start by explaining that I have not been caught up in the world of smart phones. (Surprised by this aren't you? I can tell.) I have no desire to own a phone that is smarter than I am. So, by comparison, my phone is pretty much the same one you see on the soup commercials. Now, I have to say, there are several advantages to such backward technology. Say my car breaks down and I get stranded out in the middle of nowhere and have to wait say three or four hours for a tow. Not only can I use my phone to call for help, but I can always just lick the residual soup gerb out of the inside of the can to sustain myself. "Woman Survives On Pea Soup Gerb, Film at Eleven!" (I would personally like to thank my husband for making my brain think this way.)
    Anyway, my point is, in my world, blackberries are delicious on cereal, androids are a kind of robot, and iphone is just a typo in which you meant to say my phone. My Soup Phone has everything I need. I can make calls and receive them. I have five numbers on my speed dial, one of which is my Voicemail and came pre-programmed that way, but I'm counting it anyway. I can even text. But there's no sense in that since I text like someone has taped all my fingers together with duct tape and then stabbed me in the eyes with a sharp stick. For a long time I really wasn't aware how bad my texting was. Whenever I texted my kids, they seemed to take just as long, if not longer, to respond to me. However, I have since discovered, that they are something of savants when it comes to texting. I have personally witnessed them send out full paragraphs, utilizing proper punctuation, spelling, and zero shorthand, in the time it takes me to pull up my text function. So why is it taking so long for them to respond to me? Are they just putting me on the backburner because I am just the mother, and therefore, not nearly as important as, say, their friends?
   As it turns out, no. That is not the reason. Apparently, the hold up is entirely my fault, as it takes them several minutes and usually some evaluation from innocent bystanders to decipher what I am saying. Now I get texts like, "Wtf Mom? What the heck is mmmbergorphgrl?"
   Naturally, I call them back. It's easier than the ten to fifteen texts it will require to explain what I meant the first time, and then explain all my explaining. It's like the mirror trick. You know, the one where you look at yourself in a mirror with a mirror and it goes on forever? That's me and texting. So a quick phone call (which I should have done in the first place) saying, "I wanted to know if you wanted to come for dinner. Burgers. On the grill," is really the better way to go.
   My son's response is usually something like, "Wow." My daughter's is usually less gracious.
   But, once again, I am going off on a tangent. My point is, my own texting is so profoundly miserable, that is it any wonder when I start seeing all these strange little additives in my family's texting to me, that I at first mistake them for typos? I wasn't sure whether to think they were making fun of me, or I had finally rubbed off on all of them, but honestly, when you text someone real words, heavily sprinkled with various letter and symbol combinations, what's a girl to think? Text Tourettes?
   So I ignored them. For some time. At least until my husband started sending me, what I like to call, the Potty-con. The first two or three times I ignored it, as I had so many other strange text garbles. After awhile though, it became apparent that this particular combination was repeating itself, and therefore, not unlike euphemisms such as lol and wtf, must mean something. (I may have a Soup Phone, but I am not completely ignorant.) Try as I might, to gather the meaning of this little oddity, I always came back to the same thing. A message he couldn't possibly be sending me. Unless he was wanting to know if I was suddenly suffering from incontinence.... I was confused to say the least. But honestly, you tell me what it looks like------ (y) -------- because to me, to put this delicately, it looks like a nude feminine form depicted from waist to knee in the act of crossing one leg over the other- the universal signal for, "Gotta go, gotta go, gotta go, right now!" Tell me someone sees this besides me? Anyone????
   So, finally, one day he sends not one, but two of these confusing messages. Does he want to know if I really, REALLY, have to go?? So I call him, and I'm pretty much like, "Okay, buddy. What's up with the pee pee messages??"
   Naturally he is confused. And flabbergasted. And slightly amused.
   Turns out his phone (and apparently all Smart Phones) have these little things called Emoticons. So, in his non-Soup Phone world, that is a little picture of a thumbs up. It means, Woohoo! Great job! Not, Potty time! as I had been suspecting. Unless of course you are two, in which case the two are synonymous.
   So while he was having his Did this really just happen? moment, I was shrugging and thinking, to me it will always mean Potty time. And thus the Potty-con was born. And now I gotta go.
   No really. Too much coffee.  (y)