Texting, Butter/Flutter, and Trump

The technology involved in computers, IPads, and cell phones is moving ahead at mind-numbing speeds. Most of us who have personal computers will soon see them become obsolete. Why have a computer sitting frozen to a desk in our home when we can carry little computers around with us in our pockets? People today can use these little pocket computers to access all the world’s knowledge, play tiny video games, and communicate with others anywhere in the world. Who knows what technological miracles lie just down the road? Well, the technologists have a pretty good idea, but most of us technodummies don’t. The world’s knowledge in our pockets and what are most of us doing? Are we getting smarter? Are we writing beautiful thoughts in beautiful prose? Are we writing to people? Are we talking to people? No, we’re zipping little trivial texts to people, filling them with LOG’s and OMG’s and little emoticon faces, and we send them back and forth as fast as we can. I recently read that the average American teen sends an average of 2000 text messages a month. That’s about 70 a day. And almost none of them say anything consequential. What is this fascination with texting? Thumbs fly over the tiny keys, with no regard for punctuation or spelling or sentencing. A generation or two in the future may produce young people with six-inch thumbs and atrophied fingers (brachydactylically tiny). And the beauty of the written language of the past will be lost forever. Shakespeare and all the past keepers of the language will be spinning in their graves, and our texters of the future will be OMGing and LOLing at their discomfort.

Many people, including me, have wondered which came first, the chicken or the egg. A less metaphysical question: Which came first, the “butterfly” or the “flutterby?” It would make such poetic sense that “flutterby” predated “butterfly.” What a perfect visual description of this magical creature—a colorful fluttering of wings flying back and forth and around and about and by the observer. Truth, though, is that “butterfly" is the original word, describing a fly that eats butter (the honey of visited flowers). So much for visual poetry.

And, finally, I’m astounded—yes, astounded—that anyone—yes anyone—could actually believe that Donald Trump was the winner of the first debate. The man got his ass kicked. His remarks have been likened to verbal salad, all leaf lettuce and no tomato. Talk about a verbal flutterby, the man can hardly complete a sentence, zipping from one non-thought to another, slipping and sliding away from the question to get to safer ground, and what he does say has no butter to be found.