Breaking habits, I’ve come to realize, may be one of the toughest things to do in life. Learning to not dribble with your head down and keeping your elbow in while shooting free throws have been easy compared to not texting – and I still find my self looking at the floor when I have my mind set on getting to the basket and my elbow still flairs a tad bit to the right when I’m fatigued at the charity stripe. Logic would dictate that I have no chance at going eight more days – which seems like a lifetime considering that the first three days felt like 12 days and the second three days felt like a decade. Here are those next three days. Days 7-10 will be posted on Friday.
Day 4
At this point, not texting has become as much a part of my life as my apartment, my bike, my job and working out. Not texting has become a daily routine, and things are not different because it’s Independence Day. To this point, I’ve become obsessed with my two week quest of not texting. I’m proud of this ridiculous point I’m only trying to make to myself. I tell people that I spend my lunch breaks not texting. When people ask what I’m doing, I tell them that “I’m accomplishing a goal by being on the phone with you.” Can you blame me? Probably, because all of this is self imposed, but I don’t care.
I woke up earlier than expected today because of how late I was up the night before and forgot that the women’s Wimbledon Final was on that morning. I caught the end of the last set and wanted to text the two friends I know who watched it. Then again, I don’t. I’ve just realized that I’m more obsessed with creating temptation for myself than actually not texting. I want it to be hard just so I can say “I had all of these text messages I either wanted to send or wanted to reply to, but I didn’t.” I just love challenges, even if the competition is essentially with myself.
I just got a text message from a friend telling me that Steve McNair died. This, to me was tragic because McNair was one of those quarterbacks that come around only once in a lifetime. Dude was a Heisman candidate at Alcorn State, a HBCU! He was a consummate teammate and he’d have to be paralyzed not to play. He was a football player in its truest form. A man who went to war with his teammates, and in return for his mental and physical toughness, his teammates went to war with him. I want to text so bad right now. I have no internet and I’ve been boycotting television for a couple months now, I need details. I need to know how he died. I’m checking my phone’s internet for details.
I spent the rest of the holiday missing phone calls that, for whatever reason, never went through to my side and not texting the same people. I ended up NOT hanging out with Jessie, who had just got back in from Vegas only because I couldn’t text. Oh well. This is what I set myself up for, I suppose. It feels as if the days are only going to get harder.
Day 5
I just walked into my kitchen this morning and it’s filthy – which is funny since I just cleaned this shit two days ago! This has nothing to do with me not texting, but since I couldn’t text my disgust with anyone, you have to read about it. I lived with more women than men for the majority of my life, and now I find myself pretty much living with three other dudes who don’t clean shit. I’m not the cleanest dude in the world, but damn, we’re living like pigs in this bitch. Hold on, my mom is calling.
My mom is on her way. Again, this isn’t important to the story. I look at our disgusting kitchen and decide that it’s not worth attempting to clean. She knows I live with a bunch of dudes. I’ll just blame it on them, and the leftover alcohol in the freezer from Friday night. After a quick chat we go out to eat and I get a text from a friend. I don’t read the whole message, or even the preview. I just looked at the name knowing I could call her later since I couldn’t text her at the time anyway.
It turns out my friend’s dad was having health problems and just needed someone to talk to. I feel terrible, especially since my phone fails to receive her phone call later that night. I may have underestimated the affect this non texting is going to have on other people. In fact, I’ve had about four friends tell me that it’s been killing them knowing that I’m not going to text them back because they have questions they need answered at times that it wouldn’t be convenient for a phone call. Or they need my opinion on something. All of a sudden, I have friends, and only because they know I can’t communicate in the most convenient way possible. The irony burns, especially since I know all of these wild events are going to blow over by July 15. MJ’s death, McNair’s death, NBA free agency and much more will all be old news, and new news will be boring again. I hate my life.
Day 6
It’s about 9:45 p.m. and I’m completely rewriting this post while my dog blankly stares at me while I’m on the phone having a conversation about why I’m not talkative. Early on July 6, I had my Day 6 post pretty much finished, ready to be posted whenever I felt like on July 7. However, I got some text messages from two of my five favorite people not affectionately named Mom that forced me to change my Day 6 post.
At about 7:20 p.m. Celia sent me a text message that started out with the Phillies-Reds score (a 22-1 pummeling of the Reds). Since she has started her internship, she’s become a baseball fan, so I was interested in her insight on the first real beat down of one team over the other since she became a baseball fan. What I didn’t know was she would add “and make sure you write you read this whole text too. Bwwwaaahhhhh. LOL” and follow it up with her smiley face that says, at least to me, “I’m kidding, but I’m not kidding.” She’s sly, or cunning, like a fox, or something. That was just a slice of her non-humble pie. Very few people know me well enough to know that I would appreciate something like that, even if it was just to spite my text fast.
However, another of those people is my sister. When we were younger she used to say that I was that hot dog in those Weinersnitchel commercials. I’m not going to lie, it bothered me a little because the hot dog was so fucking lame, and a hilarious thing to call someone. Well, she sent me a text after reading my post that started out with her making fun of me riding my bicycle to work on the daily then her saying, if you don’t respond to this you’re the Weinersnitchel hot dog. 10 minutes later, after receiving no response from me, she sent me another text that said, “you just got punked” and continued saying hot dog over and over again. I have thick skin, and I only have my sister to thank, because she can be one of the cruelest people with words. After a couple decades of Ashlyn, there really isn’t anything anyone can say to me that can make me feel bad, which is why I haven’t beaten my friends asses, because they all think they’re hilarious.
Either way, it’s 11:55, well past my bed time and I’m waiting for Celia to call me back so we can finish this recession proof conversation (funniest I’ve had in weeks), and I’ve realized that I need to be careful what I wish for. I wanted this to be tough, and now my sister and Celia are playing with my sanity in the same way Karla Homolka played with little girls. It’s almost torture, because they know as well as anyone that I like to take shots back, but I can’t without my ability to text or call back while they’re working. It looks like we’ve just opened up a whole new can of worms.
-Stay Hideous
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