Text message counter (7)

I keep getting texts from my wife.

She always gets mad when I fail to read them. But my cell phone gets used so infrequently that I often leave it in the briefcase, or in the car. I admit it—I am a member of the pre-smartphone generation. I haven’t been trained to keep my eyes glued to a cell phone screen every moment.

When I grew up, you often had to wait hours to call someone, particularly if you didn’t have quarters for the pay phones. It’s true. And I probably sent my first email some time around..1985? Plus or minus. We wrote real letters, on paper! Stamps. Post office.

So I got an entire series of rapid-fire text messages from my wife. She assumed (correctly) that I wouldn’t have my phone anywhere I could hear it:

“Soooo, I could be dying and you would not know.”

“The funeral director is calling you now.”

“It’s my funeral, are you attending, at least send flowers.”

“One month anniversary.”

“Now I’m going to haunt you.”

“Haunt!”

And the last one:

“Panda Express coming up.”

Now the smell of fast-food Chinese fills the apartment, and there’s a pounding at the front door.

I won’t open it.

My wife sent those text messages more than a year ago, before the accident.