The marvels of modern technology have enabled us to put the spoken word into text form, saving us from texter’s thumb. However, talk-to-text is not the seamless, failsafe cell phone feature that we would hope that it would be, not by a long shot.

I will admit that I have become extremely lazy about writing short essays on my keypad, because it 1) takes forever, and 2) the tendinitis I already suffer from in my right thumb makes the whole process of texting extremely uncomfortable. Here’s the problem: if I am in a rush, I don’t always have time to check the text message before sending. That has led to some goofy, funny, and downright embarrassing text messages which have come from my phone! It doesn’t help that I listen to comedy when I am in my car, so if I fail to turn the radio volume down, my phone will at times pick up a raunchy phrase from the radio.

There is a particularly funny example which occurred recently which I will share with you. I had been in a text exchange with a friend, and wanted to ask about how my friend’s week was going. After activating Google Talk-To-Text, I said something along those lines and sent the text quickly without proofreading it, since I was in a rush to get to a meeting. This is what my phone ended up sending:

“You Masturbate I hope you have been enjoying your week and getting lots of work done.”

Holy crap. *%@&$*%!

Apparently the comic on the radio said those first two words which were dutifully picked up by my phone. I had to dig myself out of that one! I IMMEDIATELY texted my friend, “OMG my talk to text just picked up those two words. How embarrassing!”. Thankfully, my friend was understanding, and we had a good laugh.

There have been times when I have made a point of enunciating and speaking slowly into the phone, only to get some bizarre response which makes no sense. If it becomes that hard to get ONE word right, then I end up just using my thumbs to finish the text. Something like “I need to go to the store first but we can meet up later” can turn into “I knead to goat a duster first but we can meat up later”. Yeah, ummm, ok.

What I’d like to know is why my phone picked up the comic’s words so clearly that day, but has failed to pick up my words clearly when I am speaking slowly into the receiver. I think my smart phone may be on a mission to permanently infuriate me.

I would love to hear some of your funniest or most embarrassing text messages which resulted from talk-to-text mixups!