7. Let's Confuse These Kids: 99966688 277733 6665553
Who remembers the days of three times pushing the "2" button merely to reach the letter "C"? To type "LOL," you would really have to run a marathon of clicking other buttons roughly twenty times to spell the three letter word. We were flying through those sentences faster than a genius with a Rubik's cube since we really had no idea what the future held.
The delight of trying to create a text message with just nine keys—like a texting game of Twister for your teenage-cramping fingertips—will never be known to today's high-tech kids. Mastery of the T9 predictive text was a talent, an artistic form even. Recall the delight of striking the correct sequence without even glancing at the phone. Alternatively the annoyance of overshooting and having to cycle the entire letter sequence once more. And let me not start us on depending just on muscle memory and trying to text under the desk during class. This was a period when abbreviations were required rather than only practical. "C U L8R" was careful use of our limited 160 characters, not sloppiness in texting. Not less important is the excitement of at last switching to a phone with a complete QWERTY keyboard. We were suddenly typing novellas when earlier we could hardly put a phrase together. It's evidence of our flexibility that we could have whole chats with this clumsy method. Next time you see a child tapping away on their smartphone, stop to consider how far we have come and maybe challenge them to read "4663 7744666 90 93 9933 84477 2225!"
