Call or Message?

With the advent of the mobile phone, its the order of the day that people have 2 choices of communicating instantly - either calling or messaging. I discount e-mails here since neither are they ‘instant’ forms of communication and neither are they into play due to the advent of cell phones.

I was asked recently by my oldest friend as to why I always message. Why don’t I ever call? What makes me cut calls from my friends almost abruptly? The answer is very simple in my case. I love messaging for more than one reason.

Messaging helps in letting me have my attention elsewhere and also replying at my leisure. Something which I cannot do if I call. I need to give the caller my undivided attention which is very very annoying to someone like me who suddenly wants to move from a discussion on gaming into one on human emotions. Two completely diverse topics which I speak on with two different people. If I feel bored with one, I keep messaging the other and reply later on to the first guy when I feel like talking about gaming again.

It helps me to tell anyone anything important at a moments notice even if I am not able to reach them by calling (which will be the case if they are attending another call, have switched off their phone etc). The messages weave their way into switched off cell phones and into busy networks and also (at very very rare instances if I may add) into some sort of remote server which sends the message to anyone who has gone out of range of communication and has just come back into it (going into the IIT campus is a perfect example).

I am one of those guys who lacks social skills in every form in every scale imaginable (or not). There are friends of mine who can keep on talking. They somehow come up with different subjects to talk on and keep a conversation, which should have long ended, going. Examples among my friends would be Sappi, Narender and Zombie, Venkatesh, Mirza. I, on the other hand, completely lack the skill of pulling subjects out of thin air like these guys do. So mostly, if the other guy hasn’t got much to talk, the conversation lasts less then 2 minutes. In fact, Zombie holds the record for speaking to me for the longest time - just over an hour (Phew!). I must mention that an older friend holds a better record but that wasn’t in vetti talk. We were actually discussing some subject. Messaging, hence, gives me time enough to talk on a new topic and pull new ones out for conversation - something very very advantageous.

And to be perfectly honest, I don’t like to use my mouth too much. I would rather keep it shut. I have no idea why. So don’t ask!

And last of all, I love messaging simply because my phone has the best messaging interface in the entire world (excluding other Sony Ericsson phones of course). It gives me some amount of (completely unexplainable) pleasure to message from my phone.

I didn’t explain these reasons to my friend. I just said “I dunno. I just like it”. My friend calls and says, “You like it eh? Good. Then I’d rather call than message from now on. hee hee”. The nerve of some people!