“So.. Why did you say that?”
“What? What do you mean? That’s not what I meant.”
Because of social distancing, there isn’t really a way to talk face to face to friends, especially when both of you are self conscious and avoid Zoom and video calls like the plague.
So we usually resort to texting. Besides, if you’re just leaving a quick message, when you know they probably won’t be able to pick up a call, texting becomes very convenient.
But the way we communicate becomes a bit different. Around this time last year, I hated emojis. I thought they were weird and cringy, and I didn’t use more than the occasional :) or :( face. Spelling words incorrectly also irritated me quite a bit.
Now, though, because I’m trying to keep up with the conversation at the speed that I talk, I make a typo every four words or so. And I don’t care.
Because we can’t see each other’s faces, I found that my friends and I tended to go “😅🥰🙄✋😰😳😡🤠✊🤡🥺🤧✨🤢😭💀” after a phrase or sentence that could sound ambiguous. Or if we wanted to imitate a facial expression we would make while saying it out loud.
But then again, there isn’t exactly a way to express 🤠 or 🤡 out loud. To be honest, I’m a tiny bit worried about making a weird face or a strange pause in the middle of my sentence when we inevitably go back to talking face to face.
Though I’ve been strictly social distancing since March, one day I was having family issues and my mom took me outside for a breath of fresh air. After driving around the area, I wound up near one of my closest friend’s house. I texted her and asked if we could meet up (at a safe distance, both wearing masks), she started worrying about something, and I found out that she had gone over to one of our other close friend’s house for the day.
I felt a bit of a sting for a second, but I realized that it wouldn’t long to go to the other friend’s house instead because it was on the way back home. I was also disappointed because I expected my friends to be more careful about COVID, but I digress.
On the car ride to their house, I started getting very anxious.
“What do I say? What do we.. talk about?? How am I going to greet them?”
Texting makes it so that I only contact my friends when I have something specific to say. It is sudden, abrupt, and fast. And just as suddenly, I felt like I had forgotten how to actually socialize.
Luckily, once I saw actually saw them, all the awkward feelings disappeared. We talked face-to-face for a while, all wearing masks, sitting in a triangle with 6-feet sides.
Once I went back home, I realized how much of an effect social distancing had had on me. I hadn’t even considered that conversations in real life could become awkward between my friends.
How to talk? I had been forgetting for a while.
