So, I’ve got this mobile. (I know, at last. Jane gave me one for Christmas because her number one texting friend was about to move to Boston. My Mobile Tracking Device, she calls it.) And there I was, sitting in the passenger seat as I caught a lift back to Edinburgh with Fiona, admiring the snowy landscape of the Borders beneath the peach skies of mid-afternoon, composing a txt with the edge of my thumb.

“You text like an old person,” says Fiona.

What? I thought I was getting pretty slick at it—predictive text, hittin’ those keys, bang, bang, bang. Do old people even use SMS?

“Gamers use both thumbs.”

Oh, right. Like a Gameboy. (She’s doing her PhD on gaming, so she spots these things.) I never owned a Gameboy. The occasional six-month obsession with Tetris and Super Mario World was as game as I ever got.

The next week I was in the bank, paying some bills, watching the teenage teller add up the amounts on his calculator... with both thumbs. Maths as Mario.

Lefties, righties—we’re obsolete. Evolutionary dead-ends, out-texted by Homo nintendo.

18 March 2005 · Net Culture

It could be worse. The ten-cent words, the impeccable spelling and attention to grammar -- it makes me a veritable stranger on the text message front. But good to see Speedy Snail back all the same.

Added by ed on 20 March 2005.

Thanks, Ed. Might take me a while to get up to your speed, you blogging dynamo, you!

Added by Rory on 20 March 2005.