Text-messaging avalanche shows I care

Up until our 13-year-old daughter went to the beach with extended family and left my wife and me behind to fret about shark attacks, sunburn and teenage boys, I had, over the course of my life, sent no more than a dozen text messages.

I spend a huge chunk of my existence at a keyboard trying to put events in some sort of semi-meaningful perspective and find little reason to poke away with uncoordinated thumbs at the tiny pad on my prehistoric (3-year-old) cell phone. I fear I will text my wife about picking up "milk," accidentally type "milf" and end up on the losing end of a divorce settlement. She gets the guitars, the TVs and Granddad's pistol and I get a set of napkin rings, an alimony payment and the chair in the basement that smells like bad cheese.

But it was the longest our daughter had ever been away from home and I thought an avalanche of messages would be a good opportunity to hone my texting skills, show that I care about her well-being and aggravate the living dog snot out of her. (I would like to clarify, in case of future child-custody hearings, I am in no way suggesting that my daughter is associated with canine mucus in any form. I must simply trot out the phrase every now and then to satisfy my contractual obligation to annoy those readers with delicate sensibilities. I've got a job to do, people.)

With a slight exaggeration here or there purely for comedic effect, our father-daughter long-distance text communication went something like this:

"Hey it's ur dad. R u doin ok?"

"I haven't left yet. I'm upstairs. Stop it."

"B cool. LOL."

"Stop. Don't abbreviate. You're too old to do that."

"Don't b a h8er, dawg."

"You're a dork."

(The next day, after I agreed to limit my abbreviations and hip slang, she responded to at least a few of my important text messages, like the following.)

"I had chicken for dinnerrrrrr. LOL! My rrrrrr is sticking. I could be a pirrrrate. Get it? Rrrrrr."

"Bye."

"Wait. Very important. Did you see the TV remote before you left?"

(Often, I used my new texting prowess to pass on greetings from loved ones.)

"Your mom says ho."

"She says what?"

"I meant hi not ho. Sorry. Thumbs don't worf."

"Don't worf?"

"Work. Where is remote?"

(And, of course, I kept her in the know with up-to-the-minute breaking news.)

"Mark Sanford missing."

"Who?"