Zibby Mag

By Caeli Wolfson Widger

I differentiate my closest friends by iPhone text tone: Julia is Aurora, Claire is Circles, Liz is Duck, Stacey is Keys, Emily is Waves, and so on. I do this not to be cute (I am 48) or because I am an organized person (cue my husband’s bark of laughter), but out of sheer necessity. The amount I text my best friends—call them my Texties—according to my smug screen time tracker, is the equivalent of 1 hour and 43 minutes per day.

Yes, that’s an average of ten full hours a week just for texting.

If I didn’t sound-code my conversations, how could I possibly keep track?

My text-time, which has stayed steady for years, used to embarrass me. But recently, when clearing out deep-buried detritus in our garage, I came across an ancient trove of paper notes I’d passed with my friends in middle school. Back then, my circle of five or six close girlfriends spent a large portion of our school days transcribing whatever was on our minds onto wide-ruled notebook sheets. We’d fold the notes into the smallest possible squares, then strategically lob them to each other when the teacher turned away.

We passed hundreds of them—maybe thousands.

The content of our missives was rarely time-sensitive or critical, often no more than a quick status update (Hey babe what’s up? I am DYING OF BOREDOM) or an in-the-moment observation (I can smell Mrs. D’s coffee + cigs from ten feet away ARGH. PS Your hair looks awesome 2day), though they occasionally veered into lengthy back-and-forth confessionals on topics ranging from kissable boys to the humiliation of tampons to strategies for evading serial killers (this was central Florida). They were about everything and nothing, and I read them all with relish, expertly concealed with a well-placed textbook and my cupped hand.

Given that my friends and I were sitting in the same room with multiple opportunities to speak to each other throughout the school day, the notes were completely unnecessary. And yet, we took daily risks to write and pass them, well aware of the humiliating consequences of getting caught. Most teachers at my tiny Episcopalian school would administer the immediate penalty of reading a confiscated note aloud to the class.

Why did we risk our dignity and secrets beneath the eagle eye of Mrs. D. to beam folded paper across the room, when we had ample opportunity to speak freely at lunch, at PE, during study hall? And, thirty-plus years later, why do I seize tiny, fleeting windows of opportunity to text my friends throughout the day, when we also regularly talk on the phone, keep up with each other’s social media, and, just like in the 80s, actually see each other in person?

Typically, the stuff we’re texting about isn’t particularly urgent or singularly significant. It’s mostly a mashup of daily minutiae, passing observations, micro-rants, and exuberant recommendations.

My husband rightfully points out that my texting is irritating and often rude, effectively removing me from the room and rendering me not present. You’d think the content must be pretty critical to warrant being dispatched as I stand in line in Trader Joe’s, or before I’m due at a work meeting, or beside the stove as I wait for onions to sauté while fielding homework questions from my children. And yes, sometimes, the subject matter is critical. My friends and I have had lengthy and profound text conversations about everything from health scares to marital problems to dying parents.

Typically, the stuff we’re texting about isn’t particularly urgent or singularly significant. It’s mostly a mashup of daily minutiae, passing observations, micro-rants, and exuberant recommendations. We complain about our children, partners, mutual friends, and careers. We also gush with gratitude about those same children, partners, mutual friends, and careers. We freak out a lot; we console each other.

Our conversations are fluid. Sometimes they unfold in rapid-fire back-and-forth. Sometimes one of us doesn’t respond for hours. Sometimes we forget to respond altogether. We understand the reasons for the delays, without having to explain or apologize, the way we knew, as sixth graders, that sometimes Ms. D. simply didn’t turn around all day, and so we’d have to wait until tomorrow to write back. It’s why I signed my notes LYLAS, WBS IYC! (Love you like a sister, write back soon, if you can!).

It’s not so much the content of the individual messages with my Texties that matters but the accumulation, day after day, month after month. In aggregate, my ongoing thread with each close friend acquires its own particular rhythm and tone, its own sensibilities and priorities, our preferred emojis. Our own little two-person universe created in tiny font on a four-inch screen. In middle school my friends and I had created these little private worlds too, only on blue-lined paper.

Texting grounds my friendships in the present and gives me a glimpse into the lives and minds of my favorite women. It is the digital equivalent of cupping a hand on a laminated wood desktop, scribbling on paper, and tossing the note over my shoulder, knowing it will be opened, and read, and understood.

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Caeli Wolfson Widger lives in Santa Monica, CA, with her husband and three children, where she runs a recruiting agency. Her work includes the novel Real Happy Family and various short fiction and essays.