omg <3 u miss u txt me l8r

What if instead of saying it to her face, Rick Blaine had waited until Ilsa’s plane took off at the end of “Casablanca,” and texted to her from the ground, “heres looking at u kid”?

What if she had replied by sending him an emoticon of a face with a cartoonish tear trickling down it?

Doesn’t really resonate, does it?

What if Scarlett O’Hara had simply set her Facebook status to read, “As God as my witness I’ll never be hungry again,” for a couple hours and left it at that?

Lucky for Blaine and O’Hara, they lived in ages when they had to express personal feelings, um, personally. We’re not so lucky. Even those of us who are old-fashioned, who still send letters through the mail, who read the newspaper in print and who haven’t used our iPods since the battery ran out that one time, aren’t immune from the lure of constant texting.

I am pretty old-fashioned. I watch “Designing Women,” if that puts things into perspective any. Yet, I have backed out of plans, lent support, made jokes, flirted, said I love you, ignored, been ignored, apologized, been apologized to – all through the medium of text messaging. And I’ve done it with people whom I know, people whom I care about.

And I can’t help but wonder – does any of it count?

Sure, we can keep texts, store them. In many ways they are more real than the memories we hold in our minds. They’re certainly more tangible.

But there’s something not quite right about them. Recently, I pulled an old Nokia cell phone out of the junk drawer. I turned the phone on long enough to read a number of texts from an old boyfriend: “I’m so excited we’re together,” “ur the 1 4 me,” “miss you.” They made me smile when I got them months ago, but now they hang in the air, frozen in their particular day and time like bugs that got trapped in the ice cube tray. They simply didn’t have the resonance of a memory or even a handwritten letter. They were just snippets, and reading them was more eerie than nostalgic.

We can’t let that be it for our relationships. It’s convenient to text-talk, but we can’t let it substitute for real communication. Even we, the generation that grew up talking to strangers in AOL chat rooms, need to have some standards.

The distinctions can be a little fuzzy, but they’re there. Mass texts to the crew – “whats good 2nite?” – are good and useful. However, “What do your parents do?” is a question best left to personal interaction. “Sorry im gonna be 5 mins late” works through text. “Sorry i hurt you” – not so much.

And was there ever a famous tale of romance that began with a couple texting (drunk or otherwise) back and forth for a number of days before deciding to meet for coffee face to face, let alone fall in love?

If there is, I certainly don’t want people of the next generation to read it as they fall asleep.

But I guess it beats just texting to their bedrooms, “g’nite luv u.”