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| pic: wikimedia commons |
Following Friday night’s message from 14-year-old Jane Hadley to 15-year-old Eric Carlson containing not one but two winking smileys, a hug emoticon and a colon and capital ‘D’ combined to make a grinning text face, the young boy is reportedly unsure how to respond, saying there isn’t a smiley or textual emoticon that fits neatly into the category of appropriate responses.
“We’ve been texting for a while now, and she sent me two x’s the other day, so it’s safe to say that things are getting pretty serious,” he said, gesturing to his Blackberry. “But I can’t use a single x, because we’re past that stage, and even the double x is getting a little stale. I just don’t know what to do.”
According to Carlson, a whole range of usual responses is now unsuitable.
“I can’t send her three x’s, because that might be too forward – you know, a little raunchy? – and if I send back a heart emoticon with a wink and a smile she might read into it too much,” he said. “Usually I would just type out a laugh, you know, ‘hahahahaha’ and then send a winking smiley or two back, but I really want this single instant message to make an impact, a real lasting impression, on her.”
Media Message experts have agreed that the young boy is in quite a conundrum, as moving forward into three x’s, or even a combination of ‘x’s and ‘o’s, is “a definitely too saucy”, and that “most normal smileys available to him are too benign and friendly to convey his true feelings about her”.
“As text smileys stand right now, he’s in a difficult spot,” said Reed Zintouet. “How can he tell the girl how he really feels, what he honestly thinks about her, if all he has are smileys that convey a very limited set of emotions?”
Sources close to the teenage boy now report that he is considering what could almost be proper spelling and grammar to show how much he cares for Jane.
“We looked at his phone the other day and saw that he is now using ‘yuo’ instead of ‘u’ and stuff like ‘too’ and ‘to’ and whole words instead of a garble of vowel-less bastard words,” they said to reporters.
Analysts now estimate Eric to be only four and a half months away from actually talking to Jane, and a mere eight months before they have a full conversation.
“If he keeps at this break-neck pace, they’ll be holding hands before his 17th birthday.”
However, there still is no reliable guess as to when they might one day have sex, as queries to this effect were met with stifled giggles and outbursts of laughter when we mentioned the word ‘penis’ or ‘vagina’.
“He said it again!” said Eric’s friend, Jake. “Hahahahaha, ’penis’!”
