Badoozie

“Did you know you spent over $650 last month topping up that pay-as-you-go phone of yours?” said my wife at the top of her voice. “That’s a hell of a lot more than that phone of yours f*ck’in cost! Who the hell have you been calling, I wanna know, NOW! Is it another woman? Don’t you think I deserve to know? Come on, so who is it? TELL ME”, she screamed.

“I’m sorry! I’m sorry, I said. “I’m just a TEXT-messaging junkie. I’m addicted to texting and I just can’t stop! I guess I’ll have to join TEXT-Message’ers Anonymous before I owe my soul to the devil, OH WAIT! I am already part of TEXT-Message’ers. HELP! Argh! What am I going to do?”

As a counsellor for TEXT-Message’ers Anonymous, I hear a number of variations of the following story each and every day. That sinister disease, TEXT-message fever is taking a ridiculous amount of cash from our nation’s phone users. TEXT-mania is sweeping through the foundations of our nation and there seems to be no way of stopping it. The disease (yes, it’s a social disease of almost epidemic proportions, just like HIV) is becoming such a catastrophe that soon Jerry Springer’s going to do a show about it.

If you don’t already own an instrument of the devil called a phone, a few words of warning! Don’t even think about buying one, it’s not worth it. TEXT-message-fever sets in silently; it sneaks up on you and grabs you by the wallet, cheque book or, heaven forbid you wife finds out how much you have been spending and grabs you by the balls giving you a good old screaming at.

Once you own a phone, you enter the dangerous addictive trap by “Texting” a friend. For some strange reason, typing messages to each other fascinates you so much, you just can’t stop it. Then your TEXT-friend sews another seed on the road to your TEXT-Message addiction by giving you the number of another friend with a phone. Once you get the phone number of another friend, you’ve taken the first fatal step in a journey that can only end in TEXT addiction.

Some days it gets to you more than others. You begin to feel the dirtiness of the TEXT message addiction, particularly when your wife makes you feel like a child by berating you for those astronomical pay-as-you-go prices you’ve been paying, well, that’s if she hasn’t divorced you by then.

Every time you sit down to do something, you start texting someone instead. If that friend’s busy and they don’t reply to your TEXT, you TEXT another, and another, until someone eventually replies to your TEXT message. Then you feel OK, almost a bit “high” because now you have the opportunity to sit there all day doing nothing else apart from texting your life away.

Your downfall as a TEXT-Messaging junkie is just another one of this society’s terrible tragedies, such as AIDS or the compulsion to think about sex every time you meet a girl for the very first time. Eventually your whole social life relies upon the messages you and your friends send to each other.

Hope exists, however. We, the dedicated but under-paid staff of TEXT-Message’ers Anonymous, have done extensive research to find a cure for TEXT mania, which has been ruining hundreds of lives around the world. And we have succeeded in our quest. The cure is really quite simple, yet effective: don’t buy a phone, it’s simple.