"All words are symbols that represent unspeakable realities. Which is also why words are magical." (Donald Miller tweet)

Thursday, October 22, 2009

technologized romance

Spike answered the phone. "Thanks for the flowers, honey. They're beautiful."

Except I didn't get any flowers. And Spike swears he didn't send flowers to anyone else who calls him honey. (It might have been momentarily understandable if he had, since I used a day and a half of my vacation to go to a conference this week. He puts up with a lot of nonsense, sometimes.)

So I erupted in a suspicious, jealous rage and began hurling his clothes out the window, demanding to know who would leave a message like that for him.

In return, Spike pointed out that the "honey" was unspecified, and the only conclusion he could come to was that I, not he, had sent flowers to someone outside of our happy twosome. There was weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth.

No there wasn't.

Nor was there any hurling of clothes.

The robotic voice verbalizing the text message that had been sent to the wrong number could never inspire such passion.

But the romantically-driven technological error did make us laugh. One can only hope that although the text message went to the wrong person, the flowers (in all likelihood ordered through an automated online robot) went to the right one.