#Krušedol Monastery | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

chroniclesofawkwardness · 6 years

Text

Ite, emoji est

For as long as I can remember, expressing myself verbally has never been easy. My mind seems to move much faster than the rest of me. I can’t tell you how many jokes I’ve spoiled through the years because I made the comedically fatal mistake of leading with the punchline instead of building up to it. The joke would sound great in my head, but unfold more awkwardly than a junior high dance with the boys on one side of a dimly lit, poorly decorated gym, and the girls on the other. You remember, don’t you? Everyone just sat around looking confused until the DJ announced, “Alright, lets slow it down a little bit.” Water Runs Dry by Boyz II Men would come on, but even then nobody really knew exactly how far apart to stand or what to do with their hands.

My mom attended the same Catholic school as I did. She told me that the nuns who chaperoned her school dances would make sure that there was enough room for the Holy Spirit between dance partners by separating them with balloons. If a balloon popped, so goes the theory as I understand it, the partners had gotten too close. As for the Holy Spirit, I have no idea what happened to Him (or Her). Mom never said whether He escaped or was was squashed to death. Maybe He (or She) was punished by being forced to write in a right-handed desk despite being a natural lefty, which was a favorite corrective action option among the brides of Christ at the time.

By the time I got to high school, there was just one nun left. I took four years of Latin from her, and three of those years were spent in classes at her apartment. Though I left the parochial education system after my freshman year, my parents wanted me to continue studying with her because she was the best at what she did. A true master of her craft, Sister D. was very demanding. She didn’t care if the Reds had blown a four-run lead in the bottom of the ninth the night before, or if the most awkward of all school dances, prom, was approaching. I had to bring my A-game when it came to Virgil’s Aeneid or Cicero’s Orations Against Cataline. If I didn’t, it was going to be a long night, much like games of Cards Against Humanity years later. Sister wouldn’t allow me to feign ignorance of Catilinarian conspiracies to overthrow ancient Rome, just as players in CAH wouldn’t let me play dumb when it came to smegma or pixilated bukkake. Teachers may not have been able to dispense corporal punishment as in years past, but they could still prepare you for future traumatic experiences.

Trauma can also come from something seemingly as innocuous as a text message. My texting skills have gotten better over time, but I still haven’t mastered the art. One area I struggle with is the use of emojis. I knew what they were long before I tried using them consistently, but this did not occur without a learning curve since I was more familiar with their predecessors: icons and emoticons.

I initially encountered icons when we got our first computer that ran on Windows 3.1. I knew we’d arrived in the 90s when all I had to do was click on any one of dozens of tiny pictures to be instantly transported to the far corners of the Internet or deep within the bowels of the computer itself. Hundreds of years from now, maybe historians will mark the beginning of the end of humanity as the mid-90s. This was when almost anything you could ever want became available with just a click of a mouse. Along the way, we became so dumb and temperamental as a species that we had to have things explained to us using short words, microscopic pictures, and dioramas that had previously been confined to second-grade classrooms.

When I got to college, I learned yet another use of icons. They are important to Orthodox religions because they represent significant figures within each Orthodoxy’s narrative, such as Jesus Christ, or Saint Sava. When I visited the Krušedol monastery on Fruška Gora near Novi Sad, Serbia in 2006, I was struck by both the reverence religious practitioners displayed toward the symbolism of the icons, and the presence of a distinctly modern donation box despite the fact the monastery was originally built in the early 16th century.

If reverence towards the symbolism of icons and the occasional donation can take the place of words unspoken, one could make the same argument for the precursor to the emoji, the emoticon. Entire sentences could be replaced in just a few keystrokes:

😊

😉

The last two are supposed to be a face with its tongue sticking out and a head exploding with rage. Word doesn’t know what to do with everything, but it did convert the smiling and winking faces above into emoticons without even asking me first.

Until I upgraded my phone in January 2018, I was largely incapable of viewing emojis, let alone sending them. I lost out on a lot of laughs while texting because my Samsung Galaxy S III (which I held onto long after its heyday) would essentially give me technological middle fingers in the form of blank squares whenever someone would send me an emoji too complicated for my 2012 technology to handle.

Fast forward to July 17th, also known as World Emoji Day. As one of several event leaders for a volunteer organization in my city, I was asked via text to choose which emoji best represents me. Our board wanted to create a Facebook post featuring our contributions to honor the occasion.

Without a second thought, I chose the eggplant emoji. I proudly explained that as someone who eats healthy most of the time, the eggplant symbolized the plant-based diet I try to follow. My objective was to encourage others to eat well without coming across as pretentious.

A few minutes passed before my phone buzzed in reply.

Uh, Dave… would you mind choosing another one? The eggplant emoji has some vulgar connotations. We wouldn't want your choice to be misconstrued.

As luck would have it, I was on my way to work when the response came in. By the time I got to the office, I could read it, but I couldn’t answer immediately since there’s a strict policy against using cell phones at our desks. Eager to share what had just transpired over the course of the eggplant exchange, I told a co-worker about being asked to choose another emoji even though I felt the eggplant suited me best.

He started laughing uncontrollably.

When he’d finally calmed down, I asked him why.

Dude, the eggplant emoji looks like a dick. Don’t you know that?

I did not know that. When looking in the mirror, I don’t see the resemblance. I have no clue who thought of it, or how it caught on. Still, I had to confess my ignorance just like in Cards Against Humanity the first time someone played the smegma or pixilated bukkake white cards. We got a good laugh out of it, and I didn’t mind being shamed because I knew I’d have my shot at revenge on this coworker soon enough. By his own admission, he doesn’t “word well” so I’d just have to let him talk. Without fail, he’d say something that would give me a chance at a verbal jab in his direction.

The worst part was having to wait two hours to reply to the member of the board. She’s one of the nicest people I know, and her smile really does light up a room. She’s someone who makes the most of life, and I’m glad she’s a part of mine. When I went outside on a break, I texted my apology and chose the apple emoji instead. I half expected her to inform me that the apple emoji symbolizes both temptation and adultery, but such a reply never came.

I also want to acknowledge my friend Liz, who didn’t judge me despite my use of the eggplant emoji early in our interaction when I sent her several of them simply because they were the most ridiculous things I could think of while we were both enjoying a conversation. She could have easily dismissed me as a creep who just wanted to get in her pants, but she didn’t. I imagine she laughed hysterically when I told her portions of this story.

Going forward, I’ll stick mostly to sentences. Punctuation should be enough to convey my thoughts and emotions without using emojis or their ancestors. Yet I could just be late to the emoji party. Maybe they do add value to language instead of invading, conquering, and dumbing down everything in their path.

I’m not quite ready to scream: Veni, Vidi, Emoji from atop the seven hills of Rome. Maybe by the time I am, there’ll be an emoji specifically for that feeling; that’s one I’d proudly use. For me, it would signify acceptance. As my language changed, so did I, for the better.

0 notes