A Mother/Son Encounter

I heard a story recently of a mother who discovered texting.  With her new-found language she set out to communicate with her son.  She proceeded to serenade him with well-wishes for a great day.  In closing she included the initials LOL.  Her son, being the recipient of the message and far-more versed in the modern language of texting was a bit perplexed at what he read.  Just how should he interpret this message.  A greeting of praise followed by a LOL would be hard to take any other way than with a hint of sarcasm.

As you may have guessed an inquisitive conversation ensued.  This son had to satisfy his curiosity.  Imagine how embarrassed the mother was when she found out the real meaning of LOL.  To the best of her knowledge LOL meant “Lots of Love,” not the commonly interpreted meaning of “Laugh Out Loud.”  Oh how a simple grouping of letters can mean something so different.

Another Misunderstanding

The above story reminds me of a conversation my oldest daughter and I were having using her iPad and my iPod.  We were trading messages back and forth.  My response to several of her questions was “NP” (no problem), or so I thought.  I never checked the screen when I entered the “NP” to see if it had been auto-corrected to something else.  My “NP’s” caused quite a bit of confusion when they arrived in her in-box as “NO,” as my iPod chose to present them.

I couldn’t understand why she was having a difficult time interpreting my messages until I went back and reviewed them.  Oh man!  What a mess I can get myself into just by the misuse of one little letter.  Once I shared the intended meaning to my message the light bulb went on.  So here’s what I learned:

Pay attention to how my iPod responds to the letters I enter.

and

I either must enter my “NP” as N P or cancel the auto-correction my iPod would want to make.

😮  Oh, how a simple stroke of a pen, a misspelled word or misunderstood abbreviation can make such a huge impact.  Be careful what you type . . .

NP