I’VE never said there’s a time to stop learning.
But sometimes I feel there should be times we can opt out of the evolutionary process.
I have a mobile phone, on which I text, talk and browse the internet. Over the years, I’ve learned all those things, and I’m glad I did, especially the talking.
A few days ago, one of my friends with whom I’ll occasionally text to avoid too much of the talk – Wanda calls it badgering, and my ears are increasingly frail – sent me a message without words.
I know what you’re thinking – a quirky picture, right? That would be something I’d consider normal, and yet another thing in my arsenal of phone tricks.
But no, this message was a row of emojis, a sudoku of emotions that I was supposed to digest in an effort to divulge meaning.
There was a dog’s face, a plate with a knife and fork, a banana, a croissant, an emoji face with bulging eyes, an emoji with someone vomiting their lunch, and a red cross symbol.
Turns out he wanted to tell me he’d fed his dog some banana for breakfast and was a little worried he might have to take it to the vet.
Unable to determine the purpose of the croissant which, incidentally, was to clarify that the meal represented by the plate was indeed breakfast, I got on with my day.
Then another text. Two question marks.
Oh, so he wasn’t merely telling me this tale of woe. He wanted my opinion.
He was asking me whether it was okay to feed banana to his dog. Hence the worried bulgy-eyes emoji preceding the vomit emoji which I had wrongly interpreted as a human vomit and assumed he thought it a little gross for a dog to eat banana.
“Why would you think that?” he asked me later.
Why wouldn’t I? The rest of the sentence was odd. If your dog eating banana makes you sick, then so be it.
And so, without opting in, I learned some of the quirks of the emoji language.
I don’t want to speak emoji. The same way I didn’t want to learn Klingon when grown men became fascinated with Star Trek.
There are, however, some changes in language that we must learn in order to function, to keep pace with the world around us.
Like when I pulled up at the drive through the other day, paid for my order, said “thank you” and received an unusual reply: “Have a good one.”
When in doubt, smile and nod.
As I drove off, I tried to compute this saying, recalling the first time I’d heard the term “selfie” unaware that it pertained to a photo of one’s self.
What would it be that this young gentleman would have me enjoy. Just one. He wanted me to have a good “one”.
A good day, a good trip, a good meal, a good journey to my next port of call of which he would be blissfully unaware?
Then it occurred to me. It could be a good anything of my choosing. He wanted me to be experiencing good in whatever occurrence that would help me feel that way.
When you drill down to this all-encompassing line of speech, it holds nice connotations. He didn’t care what I’d get up to next, didn’t want to be so intrusive to ask, yet had the consideration to wish me well.
Another new phrase I’ve heard is “you just do you”, which means to do whatever makes you feel good about being you.
We had similar feelings in the 70s, but the whole language behind the “love, peace and mung beans” movement was more literal.
Now, it’s about enabling people the freedom to be happy in ways that … er, umm … make them happy.
I suppose we could argue that this approach has a stench of apathy, and could incite anarchy which was another 70s offshoot.
But I prefer to think of it as an appreciation of differences, that the hairs on each of our arms is raised in a different way.
Hey Wanda, if you need me I’ll be in the back room, dancing. You know, being me.
