The first text message ever sent on December 3, 1992 when Neil Papworth, a developer at Sema Group Telecom, sent “Merry Christmas” to the Vodafone network of Richard Jarvis. There was no keyboard, so the message was typed on a PC.
Things have changed since then. In honor of 22nd birthday of the text message, amNewYork is sharing some their best–and worst–text message stories.
Caroline Linton, news editor, amny.com: As someone who is over 30, I probably should be more responsible about my text messaging, but here we are. At least as an adult, I’m fairly successful at lying my way out of bad texts. Here is one I couldn’t really get out of: I once meant to send my sister (who is involved in at least 90% of my bad behavior via text) a screenshot of a teenage relative’s Facebook page. Except instead of sending it to my sister Kate, I sent it to an old friend Kat, who is not on my regular text message rotation. Since Facebook stalking teenagers isn’t exactly an admirable personality trait (although I spend a decent amount of time doing that, come to think of it), I didn’t send anything else to Kat and hoped she had changed her number. I didn’t hear back from Kat that night, although I got a Facebook message from her later that week asking if I still had the same number because she had gotten a strange text from it. She is far too polite to say anything else, so I just answered yes and hoped it would end forever there. And I rearranged everyone in my phone by last name rather than first name to prevent this from happening again.
Georgia Kral, food and assistant news editor, amny.com: One time I sent a text message to my mother that should have gone to my husband, who was my boyfriend at the time. It wasn’t an illicit selfie or anything, but let’s just say the contents of the text were less than appropriate for a mother’s eyes. I’m hoping it didn’t haunt her for too long. (And no, I won’t reveal the exact words! One too many people are in on it already!)
Heather Senison, Associate Editor: I was making fun of a guy who had a crush on me to my girlfriend and I accidentally sent him the messages instead. I had to lie to him and play it off like I was making fun of someone else.
Alison Fox, reporter: I once received a text message from a guy who complimented me and marveled at my love of dogs and cooking, wanted to know what the catch was. So I told him “… I’m secretly a man ha.” He may not have found it as funny as I did.
Sheila Feeney, reporter: Some of us avoid TMFs by not texting anything, ever. Like me! There are enough communication platforms already in which to get in trouble and I prefer more thoughtful communications.
