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Wednesday 4 February 2015

A Joke? I think not!

Have you ever received a text that is meant for someone else? You know, when the sender presses one wrong digit and you end up with a message that has no meaning at all.

I recently got one over the holidays. The sender said that they were heading down from Brisbane and should they give me a call on the way to see if I wanted a cuppa. They also said that they were telling ‘Graeme and Donna but can’t remember the name of Tim’s restaurant.’

This was not for me (although I would have loved to meet up for a cuppa and a chat as they sounded quite nice) so I sent a polite message informing the sender that they had made an error. I also said something like ‘Enjoy your holiday and please drive safely.’

My tone was chatty and good-humoured and I let them know immediately so they could re-send the message.

No such effort was made for me when I recently sent a message to the wrong person.

My 7 year-old-daughter was invited to a birthday party on the same day as her end-of-year ballet concert. I sent a lovely message saying how sorry she was that she could not go and hoped the party went well.

The message I received went a bit like this:

Well f_ _k o_ f then. M is a sl _ t anyway.

I was shocked! 

I won’t write the complete phrase in case my daughter somehow logs on and finds my blog. She’s much better at computers than me so it wouldn’t surprise me if she did.

Anyway the message was nasty, rude and completely inappropriate. I was extremely angry that someone felt the need to make such a comment. Obviously it was some person’s idea of a joke but when it was at the expense of a young child, (my young child!) I was not laughing.

I desperately wanted to text back and tell them that there was no need for such a comment, especially as it was a just a simple mistake. But I didn’t.

It would not achieve anything and I did not want to give the situation any air. And I certainly did not want to get into a texting war with a person like that.

So I deleted the response and re-sent the message. I then got a lovely text saying that they were sorry M could not come to the party and hoped the ballet concert went well.


Order had thankfully been restored.