I love my Droid. Relax Iphone users – I am not here to debate which phone is better. But, one feature I love on my Droid this that I can text with the swipe of my finger. I just run my finger over the letters and words appear. It’s magic!!
My work phone is an iPhone and that’s fine because I don’t text much for business. It seems amazingly slow to hunt and peck with my thumbs when I can glide over the ice with my Droid. (Again, I don’t want to get text messages from you iPhone lovers telling me all the glories of the competition.) I am simply admitting that I am the world’s worst typist. It’s not an official title but you get the point.
In my high school typing class, I did poorly. There were a couple of reasons for that, but the main reason was because I could never keep my eyes on the paper. My eyes darted back and forth between the paper and the typewriter. Yes, I said typewriter…with manual keys – not an electric typewriter or even a keyboard. (And that tells you how old I am!) The teacher would walk around the classroom and gently remind us to keep our eyes on the paper.
I struggled. I never could break the habit of looking at my hands. I was amazed at the clerical talent around me. They were sitting up straight, shoulders back with their eyes glued to the paper and their fingers flying! I was hunched over like Quasimodo, my eyes flipping back and forth like i was watching Wimbledon, hunting and pecking for each letter, and my fingers covered in “white out”. (Some of you children do not even know what that is! I know, another sign of my age.)
I regret not listening to my teacher and keeping my eyes on the paper. Oh, initially my hands made fewer mistakes than my secretarial sisters, but my words per minute were pathetic. I would never catch up. I ended up being number 11 in the senior class of Crestview High School of 1981, but I would have been in the Top 10 if it weren’t for that C in typing!
Anyways, back to my Droid. When I use the script app to text I feel like my typing teacher would finally be proud of me. I keep my eyes on the screen and not the keyboard and this has saved me time and energy. The downside is that Droid also has suggested words that pop up as you script. For instance, every single time I run my finger over the letters for the word “FOR” my Droid thinks I want the word “FIT.” It’s maddening sometimes! When I script the word “WORD,” my phone concludes that I want the word “WEIRD.” It happened several times while writing that sentence! But the word swap that is most frustrating to me is when I try to type the word “HEALING” and my phone types the word “BREAKING.”
Now there is a big difference in the meaning of the words HEALING and BREAKING. Let’s be honest, when I want HEALING… I don’t want BREAKING!! They are not words I would ever use interchangeably, so I have to go back to the word “BREAKING” and replace it with the word “HEALING.” I am slow, but I’m catching on to my Droid enough that I am usually able to catch the mix up before it happens and choose the word HEALING from the 3 suggested words provided above the keyboard.
Isn’t that true for all of us though? Everyday, as our story is being written and we are flying down the highway of life, we are given a bank of words to choose from. If we don’t pay attention, autofill will choose “WEIRD” and “BREAKING.” If we stay aware of the options as we go, we can select “WORD” and “HEALING.” But, even if we don’t catch the mistake right away, that’s why God used to make “white out” and why my “smart phone” can go back and correct those choices made in haste.
God doesn’t want your story to full of WEIRD BREAKING FITS. In fact, He has written to you now FOR a HEALING WORD.
