“RJ is a newspaper columnist whose humor column, "Pogi from a Parallel Universe" comes out every Wednesday in the For Men section of the Philippine Star, the Editor-in-Chief of UNO Magazine, a seasoned television, events and weddings/debut host and actor."
We heap praise upon a fleshy appendage that has given us hours of pleasure but which has also been prone to abuse: Our opposable thumbs.
Oh how we long for the glory days of man, those days when hygiene was merely a figment of our imagination. Our genetic memories still retain the days of yore when brandishing a freshly killed piece of animal carcass was enough to impress a woman, and the only conversation that was required between meals was a guttural grunt. However, nowadays the freshly killed piece of meat needs to be accompanied by a chauffeur-driven ride to the restaurant, a glass of pricey red wine and a well-paid complement on her dress. We don’t mind that the dinner date has cost us about six months worth of our salary, but to require men to engage in small talk during the date has the same appeal as a free vasectomy.
By the time most men are finished with puberty, they become masters with their appendages. However, manual dexterity doesn’t translate to verbal dexterity as men fail to progress from white belts in the art of holding a conversation. But women, on the other hand, can karate-chop men into verbal submission faster than a politician switching camps during election season because they are hardwired to outtalk men. And this has been the case even before the invention of indoor plumbing. For thousands of years, men were hunters: we spent our days scratching their crotches, farting and then laughing hysterically about it, while waiting for their next meal to pounce along (or to pounce on us). Meanwhile, women were the child-bearers and child-rearers: they spent their days hoping that disposable diapers would soon be invented while interacting with other women in their tribe.
Even back them, men would rather risk their lives being turned into a saber-toothed tiger’s version of a Big Mac meal instead of spending five minutes at the end of his day to tell his wife how his day went (Of course, what could he really say to his wife except that he had scratched his crotch, farted a lot, and laughed). So is it wonder then why men don’t understand how women can stay up late at night just to catch Oprah (you must utter her name in reverence) and why women can’t understand the appeal of Ultimate Fighting Championships and Adam Sandler movies?
According to Why Men Don’t Listen and Women Can’t Read Maps, men have a scientifically verifiable excuse as to why they can’t hold a conversation as well as they can hold a drink: Unlike women, speech and language skills are not specific brain skills for men. Fact is, although speech and language operate mainly in the man’s left brain, it has no particular location on that side of the brain. When a man talks, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans reveal that the left hemisphere becomes active as it searches to find a center for speaking but it is unable to find one. Unfortunately, our center for language skills is as missing as the administration’s moral compass. In the end, this merely confirms what women have known all along about men: That we have really nothing inside our heads.
Since we have limited brain locations for speech, man needed to communicate the most information possible with the fewest words possible. And since man could not figure out how to communicate through his flatulence, he begged to God to save him from small talk. After having a good laugh for several thousands years, God finally decided to take pity on man and gave him text messaging.
A sustained conversation has been the downfall of many men, because the more we talk, the more likely the women will see through our charade: That our entire five minute conversation was merely a spiel of memorized topics and rehashed pick up lines that were strung together, when all we really want to say are the key words “Naked”, “busy” and “helicopter”. This is a classic case of verbal mismatch: Men exhaust everything they can possibly say that will sound like a sentence in the first five minutes of their dates, while women have enough verbal ammunition to last them until the wee hours of the morning. That is the reason that men drink copiously during dinner dates with the hope that slurred speech will resemble an extended conversation.
This is why we thank the good Lord for the miracle that is text messaging: It is an abbreviated conversation, free from the confines of spelling, punctuation and grammar, and can be said in less than two hundred lines or less (at may smiley face pa). Remember, whenever you talk to a woman, there is always the possibility that you can screw up and insert the word “naked” if you talk longer than five minutes. Whenever you text a woman, there is still the possibility that you can screw up. But you can screw up in a much shorter period of time. And, more importantly, she cannot slap you via text.
Texting even allows you to feign wittiness because you can forward cheesy romantic texts that you googled online and claim them as your own. But for the less resourceful men out there who have no time to formulate cholesterol-forming text messages because they need to send the same text message to ten girls simultaneously, they can always resort to the pakyut texts which simulate thoughtfulness like “Mis u na me mwah,” “M thnkn f u” or “Hus ur dady”. And, if you finally run out of things to text, then you can always send out the all-ambiguous “=)” (No, that is not a phallic symbol. Unless you want it to be.)
However, my fellow men, let us try not to abuse text-messaging as much as we abuse our fleshy appendages. Take the curious case of Mr. Serial Texter – a man who lacked love, a man who lacked sympathy, and a man who lacked several million neurons.
A close female friend of mine, who shall remain anonymous (my former lifestyle editor at the Manila Times) had become the unwitting victim of a male friend who was helping cell phone companies meet their profit goals for the year by sending her almost a hundred texts a day (seriously).
She thought it was perfectly safe to give him her cell phone number because they had met in a church group. (Apparently, this man went to church a lot to thank God for text messaging.) After the end of one prayer meeting, she noticed that this man was sulking in the corner of the room, his head bowed, eyes swollen, and his thumb surgically attached to the keypad of his cellphone.
She was drawn to this sad little creature with bad posture and carpal tunnel syndrome. “What’s wrong?” she asked.
“The girl I was making ligaw.” his lips trembled. “She…she basted me!”
“Wow.” she thought “That is so sad. His vocabulary is so out of date. Basted is so eighties.” She shrugged her shoulders. “Is there anything I can do to help?”
He wiped his nose on his sleeve, “Do you mind if I text you? There’s nobody I can seek comfort in anymore. They won’t even take my calls at WRock!” He struggled to grin. “Can I have your cell phone number?”
She half-smiled back. “Why not?” she said. ‘How harmful can it be?’ she thought.
The very next day she received thirty texts from this man asking “Hwru?”. Being the amiable, Catholic reared schoolgirl slash newspaper editor she was, she first replied rather politely with such texts as “I’m chipper today, but I hope you are doing better?” to “I’m quite busy at the moment” and finally to the all ambiguous “=)” (And there was totally nothing that was phallic about it). But after the twenty-third time that he had sent the text, she abstained from replying. “God,” she prayed, “grant me patience.”
Her cell phone was peaceful for all of three minutes when she received a flurry of thirty more texts from him asking “Is it a gud tym 2 text u?” For the first couple of texts, she tried to maintain her ever-pleasant (yet rapidly diminishing) demeanor by replying “I’m not that available right now” or “Some other time” and, of course, the all-familiar, all-knowing, “=)”. But after the thirty-fifth text, she refrained from sending any more replies. “God,” she prayed, “grant me sympathy.”
And, of course, he couldn’t help but send out a volley of fifty more texts asking her, “Did I do anything 2 ofend u?” Not one of those texts deserved a reply. Not even the omnipotent reply of “=)”. Not even if that omnipotent reply was a phallic symbol. “God,” she prayed, “grant me a heavy blunt object that I can use to crush his fingers.”
After switching off her phone, she took a deep breath, a shot of vodka, several tranquilizers, and called me for advice. “Is it time to hire professional mercenaries?” she begged. After we couldn’t find a hitman who was within her budget, I told her to text back a message that would tell him she had had enough, but at the same time end on a slightly comforting note. And although she to text him back a slightly comforting “^&%* u”, the actual message read, “M a very bz persn so I cnt txt bak all d tym. Hope u undrstnd. Pls dnt txt me if I dnt txt u.”
When she sent this message, her cell phone went silent for all of five minutes. She crossed herself and looked skyward. Then, in the sixth minutes, he texted her back, “Ok, I understand. SO WEN S D BEST TYM 2 TXT U?”
My former editor has since gone into a hiding in a small African country where the most modern form of communication is smoke signals. As for Mr. Serial Texter, we just allowed him to keep texting and texting and texting. Sooner or later, his appendage will turn manhid and gangrenous. That will be punishment enough.
Originally published in Manila Times on April 17, 2005