My phone rang, and “The Inquisitive One” appeared on the screen.

“Hey you!” I said, upon answering.

“Hey Liza!” said the inquisitive one. “I’m calling because I’m concerned about something, and I want to discuss it with you. Do you know?—people keep saying you and I are the same person!”

“Oh, well, it happens,” I said. “Honestly, I’m flattered when they think that.”

“Well, I’m not. Plus, it bothers me. It’s as if they think I don’t exist!”

“If it makes you feel any better, I’ve explained to several people that you and I are different. Hopefully word will get around!”

“Thanks, Liza! But why do people sometimes think we’re the same person?”

“Hmm. I guess I learned that in college. None of the characters in a work of fiction should be confused with the author. Not even when there’s a narrator using the word I to describe him- or herself. And not even when it’s an autobiographical story with a protagonist with many similarities to the author.”

“Oh yeah—I learned that in college, too! So, when the author Tim O’Brien uses the word I in the short story collection The Things They Carried, these narrators should not be confused with O’Brien himself, even though the narrators experience many of the same things O’Brien did during and after the Vietnam War!”

“And the character Ivan Denisovich experiences many of the same things the author Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn did when he was imprisoned in a Soviet gulag, but not everything mentioned in the novel One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich matches Solzhenitsyn’s actual history and memories!”

“And when the foreword to the novel The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux details evidence that the opera ghost really existed, this claim is not being made by Leroux, but by the fictional narrator!”

“Actually,” I observed, “that one’s a bit more complicated.”

“In any case,” said the inquisitive one, “please continue spreading the word. I really—”

“Hold on a sec,” I said, staring out the window at a flying saucer coming to a gentle landing on my front lawn. As I kept watching, the door slid open.

“Oh my gosh!” I cried out. “Three little green aliens are walking on my lawn!”

“What?” said the inquisitive one. “Wait, that’s super interesting to me, because—”

“I’ll call you back,” I said, hung up my phone, and ran outside.

“Take us to your leader!” said the little green aliens.

“Okay,” I said, “but I don’t know where Lady Gaga lives!”

“Take us to your leader!” said the little green aliens.

“Okay, follow me,” I cried, hopping into my car and thinking like crazy and realizing—

But that’s another story.

I would like to discuss with you a modern problem, one that has the potential to strain relationships, upset family members, destroy old friendships, prevent new friendships, and restrict opportunities of all kinds. All this, you say? Yes, the potential for all this, I say. What is this potentially destructive modern problem? you ask. Let me explain through a story, I explain:

I had gone on a few dates with a sweet, athletic, intelligent, family-oriented, and career-minded man. Wishing to communicate something important to him, I made the regrettable—for more than one reason—decision to do so through text messaging. I am a woman of the modern era; that’s my excuse. Well, and I may also be a rotten and thoughtless person. In any case, he called me the next day.

For twenty excruciating minutes, he beat around the bush. He wanted to talk about anything and everything, except for the content of my text. Meanwhile I, trying to go with the flow, did not intervene, but rather answered his questions briefly and without emotion (see: rotten and thoughtless person, above). Finally, he said, “Well, it doesn’t seem like you’re in the mood to talk tonight.”

“Um,” I blurted out, “don’t you want to talk about my text?!”

(By this point, you’ve probably guessed where this story is going. . . .)

“What text?” he said.

He had not received the text! Caught off guard, I proceeded to completely bungle an oral explanation of what I had written, communicating in the most uncomprehensible English my convoluted point of view; and things ended badly.

In addition to having experienced outbound texting failures, I have also been on the non-receiving end of things. In the past year, I have failed to receive text messages from my mother, my psychotherapist, and my housemate. That last was an especially interesting case, since it was a group text, and the other recipient got it just fine.

Having felt frustrated by this problem for months, I finally found the time to scamper off to the Internet. There, I discovered that many others are having this issue. And then I discovered that my phone service provider offers a text messaging app that can be installed on multiple devices (in my case, phone and laptop) and that, people claimed, solved the problem for them.

The setup of these apps went uncommonly smoothly. And now—whoa!—I can text from my laptop, not just my phone. This is an exciting development, as it means I don’t have to interrupt the flow of my work at the keyboard if I want to shoot off a quick text, or read an incoming text. Moreover, if my phone breaks or goes missing, I can still access my text messages.

Something else interesting occurred when I installed the apps. The missing text from my housemate appeared, in proper sequence, on my laptop’s app! . . . though it is still missing on my phone’s app. Such a mystery!

How many friendships around the world have been damaged, or prevented from flowering, due to missed texts? How many business opportunities have fallen through? How many mothers have sighed, thinking their children were remiss in sending love, when actually they were not? What countless words would Charles Dickens pen about this tragedy, were he alive today?

Have you ever missed an important text? Have you ever sent one that never made it out of the ether and onto the intended recipient’s phone?

The inquisitive one was expecting a message. Surely the message would arrive today.

Most likely, the message would come via email or text. It was possible that it would come through Facebook or Twitter. WhatsApp was a distinct possibility. Then again, it could be an actual phone call. It could conceivably come through TrilliSilli, DeAppinessApp, or Appavader Rex—though these channels were less likely.

The inquisitive one had put the mobile device on the counter and started to cook something when the doorbell rang. But the garlic was about to burn, plus the water started boiling over from the other pan, and then the smoke detector started blaring. The inquisitive one removed the pans from heat, fanned off the smoke alarm with a towel, and opened the door—but no one was there.

Upon shutting the door, the inquisitive one returned to the kitchen and checked the mobile device. “No new messages!” the mobile device told the inquisitive one—though not out loud. No: the mobile device was silent.

Once all the food was cooked and put away, the inquisitive one went on a run. The inquisitive one had entered and emerged from the woods and was heading toward home when a car pulled up and rolled down its window.

“Hey, guess what?” shouted the person in the car.

The inquisitive one stopped running and stood there, panting and staring.

“I thought you were someone else,” said the person, and drove away with a squeal.

The inquisitive one resumed running, though somewhat slower than before. Upon arriving home, the inquisitive one looked at the mobile device. “You are unworthy!” shouted the mobile device—though not out loud. No: the mobile device was practicing noise neglect.

The inquisitive one put the phone on the counter next to the bathroom sink, stripped off the sweaty clothes, and got in the shower. A moth was flying around, avoiding the stream of warm water. When the moth landed on a nearby wall tile, the inquisitive one smooshed it.

At that moment, as if the inquisitive one had pushed a button—the mobile device spoke aloud!!

But . . . was it electronic singing, or, since water was rushing so loudly around the inquisitive one’s ears, was it imagination?

The inquisitive one picked up the bar of soap, fantasizing about scrolling.

My brother and his family recently moved to my area, which has been a wondrous and unexpected blessing. For the first time in my adult life, I am living near relatives.

There’s a part of me that wants to say, “Go away—you’re encroaching on my territory!” but that’s my self-destructive side. I am not used to having family nearby; I am used to the grittiness of going it alone. I have learned that I am fully able to tough it out . . . but life is tough enough without imposing extra, unnecessary hardships upon oneself.

The better part of me—in both senses of the expression—are thrilled, thrilled, thrilled at having family nearby. And so, I appreciated the early scene in Kamila Shamsie’s novel Home Fire in which one of the protagonists, having recently moved to another country—and continent—to further her education and career, reflects on the fact of her family being so far away . . . as well as on the word touch:

“She touched her shoulder, muscles knotted beneath the skin. Pressed down, and knew what it was to be without family; no one’s hands but your own to minister to your suffering. We’ll be in touch all the time, she and Aneeka had said to each other in the weeks before she had left. But ‘touch’ was the one thing modern technology didn’t allow.”

Of course, it’s not just modern technology that doesn’t allow touch. The word touch has been in use for at least 700 years; however, its meaning of “communication”—as in “let’s stay in touch” or “we fell out of touch”—is more recent, having originated in 1884. In the late 1800s, people presumably used the word to refer to (among other things) communication through letter writing: a more ancient form of technology than digital devices, but a technology nonetheless.

Whether you’re in touch with your family through Skype, as in the novel, or through older forms of remote communication (text . . . email . . . landline . . . snail mail . . . telegraph . . . smoke signals . . . carvings in trees . . . rock arrangements in strategic locations), no technology can replace a shoulder massage, hug, kiss, pat on the knee, or gentle and playful kick in the butt.

When was the last time you were in touch with family, not just in the communication sense but literally?