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?

Another year’s end has snuck up on us: Happy New Year’s Eve! Let’s take a moment to reflect on the past and look ahead to the future. Let’s do it for old times’ sake! We do it every year; why break a good tradition now? . . . especially since it’s such a wise and valuable tradition.

New Year’s Resolutions

Have you made any resolutions for the upcoming year? If so, I’d love to hear what they are—tell me about them in the comments!

As for me, I’m pretty boring—that is, consistent and persistent and other positive adjectives like those—because I make the same resolution every year. My New Year’s resolution for 2019, as for every year, is to read 50 books. I only rarely achieve this goal, to tell the truth, but it’s good, I feel, to have high aspirations.

This year I read a total of 37 books. Gulp—that’s not nearly as close to 50 as I would have liked. However, I did, this year, read the 1079-page masterwork Infinite Jest, by David Foster Wallace, from start to finish. That must count for at least 10 or 20 books . . . right?

In any case, I am finding it more and more important, in the digital age, to stake out reading time for myself. Early in the morning and before bed seem to be the best reading times for me. I love, love, love reading—but, still, my phone calls to me softly. Softly, incessantly, it beckons; I have to resist, and to actively decide to read: as opposed to tap and scroll around aimlessly. Does anyone else struggle with this? Any tips?

More Opposites That Are the Same

While writing my post Shopping Cart Wisdom, I was delighted to stumble across another set of opposite words with the same meaning! (See my recent post These Two? Exactly the Same.)

Writing about the categorical imperative, a philosophy developed by Kant, made me wonder about the word categorical. Shouldn’t that, I thought, be uncategorical? The answer is no. Confusingly, the word categorical means “unconditional” or “unqualified.” We modern folk, however, often add -un and say uncategorical when we mean categorical. Technically, these two words are opposites; but in everyday usage, they have, mistakenly, come to have the same meaning. Check out the embarrassing malapropism in this video between 0:30 and 0:40 . . . oops.

This prefix confusion made me think of another duo of opposites! Inflammable means “capable of being set on fire; combustible.” It’s a relative of the word inflame. However, as this word is very important for safety reasons, people started using the word flammable to mean the same thing, fearing that people might mistakenly think that the prefix in- means “not.” And so we have two words that seem as if they could be opposites, but have the same meaning. (See dictionary.com’s Usage note for more info!)

What Is a Blog?

While we’re on the subject of word usage, let’s talk about the word blog. Its etymology is “web” + “log” = weblog, or blog for short. A blog is a log—that is, a diary or journal—that’s on the web. Nobody uses weblog anymore (did anyone ever?), but it’s a good mnemonic device: a blog is a web log containing many entries. Each individual entry is called a post. Admittedly, some dictionaries have a secondary definition indicating that one post can be referred to as a blog; but other dictionaries do not. I’d like to stand by my assertion that a blog is the entire collection, not just one item in the collection.

Auld Lang Syne

I’ll refrain from analyzing the etymology of auld lang syne, as doing so may try the patience of all of us! Besides, we have things to do, places to go, people to meet, and flammable and inflammable objects to ignite . . . or at least watch being ignited. Have a fabulous last day of 2018 and first day of 2019!

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.