A little boy from the Bronx used to spend every summer with his grandparents in the apartment next to mine. I was a little girl back then, and we did typical little people things like rollerblading and hopscotch. We had little people arguments about which ice cream flavor was the best and which teenage mutant ninja turtle was the toughest. We had little laughs and smiles. We were little best friends.

When I graduated elementary school and became a medium sized person, my family moved into a house a couple miles away from the apartment complex. My attention span was still little and I soon forgot about my little best friend. I made new medium sized friends around my area and I began to attach to them. I don’t know what the medium sized boy from the Bronx did during those four summers.

I graduated middle school and became a normal sized person with a keyboard cell phone and a Facebook account. To my surprise, the boy from the Bronx had remembered me after the four years and we began to chat over Facebook and text messages. We spent some time trying to catch up on those four years by sending streams of text messages. We tried so hard to regain the lost friendship that we spilled ourselves into those written conversations.

I think that was a bad idea. A conversation over text messages does not feel like a real life conversation because texts are too short and too simple to represent another person. There is also a comfort in texting that is not found in real life conversations--time. Text messages are more comfortable because we are removed from any immediate situation that may come up. The other person’s response and emotions do not have to be dealt with right away; there is time to think of a charming response. I used to spend a couple minutes crafting each text message so that it would represent the person I wanted to be. However, those charming responses didn’t represent my not-so-charming self.

On the other hand, sometimes text messages can be truer to a part of us normally kept hidden. We can be more loving and caring over text messages because in person, those feelings are difficult. They are strong and overpowering, so they can make us vulnerable to the instant response of the other person. Texting is a wall which we can hide behind when our faces get flushed and our palms are sweaty. But, sometimes feelings are better kept secret. We should not reveal ourselves in a rush; instead, we should reveal ourselves when we gain the courage to withstand the flushed face and sweaty palms.

Text messages let us move faster. They make us feel more comfortable revealing secrets and feelings we would have kept to ourselves in real life. The teen culture of texting seems to be filled with “deep texting conversations.” During these, two people reveal more about themselves than they would have in person. These conversations make the two people feel a sense of closeness. I think that feeling of closeness is false. It takes time and effort to achieve closeness with another person. It takes time for the other person to unravel and reveal themselves in their real life comfort zone. There should be mystery and suspense in learning about the other, and friendship should not be so easy. We need to spend time curiously discovering the other person.

Friendship takes patience. We should not be able to understand the other person at all times; there should be confusion and uneasiness. If these feelings are endured, the friendship grows stronger and closer. Time needs to be spent pondering and longing for the other person. The constant connection to friends that texting provides invades personal thinking space. Instead of needlessly conversing with friends, we should take pride in ourselves and spend time in our own thoughts.

Today there is a high school epidemic of the word awkward. Maybe it’s because we have become awkward. We have become so used to hiding behind the wall of texting that the strength of a real life conversation is overpowering. The emotions that accompany conversation have become foreign and scary.

When I finally met up with the boy from the Bronx after the four year break, it was awkward. At first, I couldn’t figure out why we didn’t connect like we used to and how we did over text messages. The time crept by and I realized that the boy from the Bronx was different than I had imagined. As I had read his text messages, I had made up inflection in his voice and expressions on his face. I had imagined a different boy from the Bronx than the one that stood in front of me. Though I knew all the facts about him, I didn’t know him.

We had rushed into one another through text messages and the closeness was fake. We had created a permanent awkwardness by revealing ourselves much too soon. The mystery of friendship had been destroyed and we had nothing left to say. I never regained my friendship with the boy from the Bronx because I had hid behind the wall of texting.