Crossed Wires and Bad Liars

                Ok folks, let’s be real, we’ve all done it – you’re writing a text about someone, something romantic and gushy or something bitchy and cold, but you’re so stuck on the person that you’re writing it about , that that is the name that stays in your head when you choose who to send the text to. Before you know it, you’re sending that emotionally devastating text to the absolute opposite of your intended recipient. You try and hit cancel, if you have an iPhone, there is no cancel and you shake the phone, hit it against something, hope that somehow you can stop the inevitable. You imagine the text, hundreds of invisible letters speeding like little social-life ending bullets through the air. You imagine the beep, vibrate, buzz, ding of the person’s phone, the puzzled look on their face, the dawning look realization that spreads across their face, the consequential laughter, tears or repugnance. Once the initial panic is over, you start furiously brainstorming of how to do damage control. (Not) surprisingly people never want to just own up and tell the truth. If you’re one of those people (let’s be real, you probably are), the ladies at Textiquette have collected stories from our wizened and sage friends, or textsperts if you will, and  have created an arsenal of possibly believable excuses that could be used as damage control if you find yourself in this situation (which, invariably, you will).

                We recently heard a story of a brilliant cover up during one of the worst cases of crossed wires we could imagine encountering. A guy was texting his new hookup and decided to cut to the chase in sending in her a pretty blunt text: “How about some vag?” – yes gross, we know. Unfortunately, his is one of those phones that asks you if you want to send to the most recent recipient, and if you click, even by accident, it will send it to that person. In this particular case, the person was his mother. Horror of horrors, we know. However, our young sexter managed to recover absolutely brilliantly. Upon realizing his error, he quickly sent a follow up text, “Sorry mom, I lost a bet, I had to send you that.” The ladies of textiquette were floored by his genius. Well done, sir, well done. So, excuse numero uno: blame it on a lost bet, a dare, what have you. To really drive this in, have some other friends mention the bet/dare to the text recipient when they’re next around them. Have them throw in some, “god, wasn’t that dare sooooo funny?” and “oh my gosh, he thought you’d think he ACTUALLY meant it, OBVI it was a dare, ha ha!”, just for good measure.

                None of our other excuses really measure up to the aforementioned stroke of genius, but we’ll give them to you anyway .

As we mentioned in our very first textiquette article, one of our dear textiquette ladies accidentally sent a text, which relayed in full her absolute obsession with a guy, to said guy. Awk, to say the least. In this case, she actually just told the truth (noob), but in retrospect, we’ve come up with some creative ways she could’ve gotten out of this one.

1. Sorry! Someone stole my phone!
2. I was drunk (and inexplicably articulate)
3. Your ex girlfriend had a gun to my head and made me send it in a convoluted effort to destroy our blossoming love

Ok, so the third one will take a little more background work (i.e. his ex needs to be legitimately in an asylum already or else you’ve got some major convincing to do), but desperate times call for desperate measures, my friends.

So what about in the not quite as bad event that you accidentally text the bitchy message about your “friend” Alyssa that was meant for Ashley to Alyssa? It’s not as bad as texting the guy you’re interested in – why? Because the guy didn’t already have an inkling that you were obsessed with him (hopefully), whereas unless your friend is completely oblivious, she probably knew to some degree that you talked smack about her and this will only confirm her suspicions. Or will it? 

So, here’s the scenario:

You write a text meant for Ashley that says, “Alyssa hasn’t stopped bragging about the freaking five pounds she lost. Will she just shut up?!” but the text goes to Alyssa. WHAT DO YOU DO?

1. You could say, “Haha, sorry, didn’t mean to write ‘Alyssa’, meant to write ‘Sara’, I was just thinking of you when I wrote the text cuz I was sending it to you. But seriously, have you heard Sara bragging? You lost five pounds and you haven’t been obnoxious! She should learn from you!” – This text, though unfortunately implicating your friend Sara, will serve the dual purpose of covering your ass after that stupid text faux pas and also complimenting Alyssa and thus throwing her off the scent by making her think that you think that she’s actually modest. Unfortunately, she’ll probably start bragging about how modest she is. If she does, do what everyone else does and just bitch about it as soon as she leaves the room. Duh.
2. You could say, “oh weird, my phone auto-corrected ‘Ashley’ to ‘Alyssa’” then insert the same thing you said about Sara.
3. You could say, “my phone autocorrected “should be” to “hasn’t stopped” and “She should be proud, she looks great” to “Will she just shut up?!” This one isn’t quite as believable, but you could convince Alyssa that your tech savvy boyf has been messing around with your phone and it is now autocorrecting things to the opposite of their semantic intent. Alyssa will probably believe you because she doesn’t understand technology, only effective weightless techniques. Ugh.

So my dear friends, if you find yourself in a digital pickle, fear not, you can rely on our arsenal of extremely believable (for the most part) excuses. But beware – if you receive any of the aforementioned as a follow up text, you’re probably being lied to. Awk.