Seasonal Textual Disorder

I’m not into big, overdone holidays that involve drinking. Call me boring, but I have no interest in waiting in big line ups and cramming into bars with inflated ticket prices only to have some drunk frat-boy wannabe spill beer on the floor (and on my Revas). And usually these mass events involve dressing up in tacky costumes or wearing theme colours.

No go.

These drinking holidays are a perfect excuse for girls to put on slutty outfits, and for guys to roam around in packs hunting for a shamrock shake. Undoubtedly, these holidays offer up tons of disappointment, as do most super-commercialized endeavors targeting the masses. You see young professionals regress into childishness because Halloween is an excuse to hook up with a random dominatrix policewoman. Or because NYE is an opportunity to kiss people at midnight (people, plural).

The night of St. Patrick’s Day, I received a series of text messages from a guy, which got me thinking. While I was quietly at home reading up on my macro homework (yes, I’m the most boring young professional ever) – my phone started to explode. Normally, solicitation (aka. booty call texts – cos no one even “calls” anymore) happens between 1-2 am. But with drinking holidays, you have to adjust that point to approximately…4pm.

Kidding. More like 10pm.

Suffice to say, the fact that you’re probably wearing a ridiculous leprechaun hat seems to heighten the effect of liquid courage, making you dig into the recesses of your contact list. The hat also gives you the conviction to reach out to someone for a do-over attempt. It’s lovely that the pints of Guinness are making you remember how cool that girl was, or regret how bitchy you were to that guy you met last year. But reaching out to them – via text, no less – in your drunken hour is not flattering. And it definitely will not make them fall ass over teakettle in love with you any time soon!

So why don’t we try leaving the phone at home, shall we? So there isn’t the temptation to wreck what could be a perfectly good comeback appearance when sober, with obnoxious whining that is unbecoming? It’s perfectly possible to reconnect with that person from the past…but a heightened emotional state of being sauced on the floor of the Bier Markt is not the place to start. The luck of the Irish will not be able to help you get lucky at that point!

The acceptability of young professionals relying so heavily on passive texting is really an underscoring disappointment here. Instead of manning up (and I mean that in a unisex way), picking up the phone and calling someone, we zip off an SMS or BBM in the hope that it gets a reply. As the spring thaw hits, the need to find comrades to share patio time provides a great excuse to reconnect. But not making the effort to actually ring someone is kinda weak (especially if you have some sort of interest in them). I remember once calling up a guy on my way home just to shoot the shit, and him being mute with shock that I had a voice. It’s this shrinking from direct contact that threatens how well rounded we become. There is no hesitation about running conference calls or presenting decks at work, but when it comes to talking to a person you like…you claim halvsies in responsibility.

Let’s try a social experiment for a little while, and actually reply back by hitting the call button instead of typing. That will likely pay better dividends than the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.