look who's talking

am i the only person in the world that has trouble carrying on a conversation using facebook chat?

now let me be clear before i begin. i have probably engaged in fewer than a dozen fb chats in my lifetime. the first time, something popped up on my screen and literally scared the crap out of me. then i noticed a familiar name at the top of the window and i realized that someone was inviting me into a conversation.

so here's the problem. i simply cannot type fast enough to engage in a real-time i.m. exchange with another human being. let's say i just received an invitation to chat via one of those pop-up notifications on facebook. hey, what's up? so i respond with a clever retort. uh, not much. and you? next comes the actual conversation. so how's your summer been so far? now typically i will spend thirty seconds or so typing my response, even a brief one. but while i'm putting the finishing touches on my reply, my fb friend has likely come to the conclusion that i have nothing more to say and takes the opportunity to deliver a follow-up message. but, of course, i was still typing my response to his/her original query. so now i have to delete the initial response i was working on and begin anew. eventually i press "enter" and send my communique. but while i was pressing "enter", my friend has already fired off a further dispatch. so now our conversational pattern is entirely out of whack. it's as if i am consistently one step behind my chat partner in terms of this ugly dance. and those tiny icons to the right of my friend's name in the conversation window are of no help either. i mean, doesn't the caption icon mean that my fb pal is busy keying in a message? but when the caption icon disappears from his/her name and i begin typing my comment, another line of dialogue will suddenly appear and it's back to the drawing board for me. ugh.

oh, how i miss the telephone.

"to effectively communicate, we must realize that we are all different in the way we perceive the world and use this understanding as a guide to our communication with others.” - anthony robbins

my favorite band for about five seconds in the mid-eighties:


p.s. glad to be back. i missed all the noise.