“I wanna love you, Baybay!”

Sip a cognac, it’s the extended version.

I thought technology was supposed to make life easier.

Anyone who knows me knows I love my gadgets. I have three computers which I now call miss small, miss medium and miss large. I’m a smartphone carrying, facebooking, texting, tweeting, blogging, emailing cutie. But the collision of technology and romance has me a little…confused.

I guess it’s because I’m having to learn this whole new set of rules. Suddenly, picking up the phone and calling seems so monumentally intrusive, even though it worked just fine before there was something else to do. So I’m staring at a phone number that I’m too chicken to call. Because what if he answers? What do I say then? What if he doesn’t answer? How do I feel then? I hide behind text messages that may or may not make an appearance on my intended’s phone. It gives me a chance to think it out first. To me, text messages are the disposable currency of the modern relationship. You send me a few SMS sweet nothings and maybe we’re getting somewhere. Withhold and I’m sure you’re not into me. When I want to forget this whole thing happened, I delete them. Unlike love letters , a text takes no effort to dispose of. You can do it in bed or on the toilet or at a traffic light – whenever “I’m sick of this mess.” hits you. And it will hit you. I mean, how am I supposed to feel when my well thought out (during commercial breaks) 160 character missives go unanswered? I feel like he pretty much circled “no.”

Then there’s Facebook to contend with. What if he gives me action there, but he doesn’t really call? Is that serious or not? What if we were to tweet on Twitter with intensity? How do you know when you’re making progress or when you’re just treading water when it feels like you could be doing both simultaneously? Making connections in this technological space isn’t ridiculous to me. But sometimes making the leap from the virtual to the reality is more than I can take seriously.

10 years ago, I didn’t have all these questions. This stuff didn’t exist for me to get all confused about. He called or he didn’t. There weren’t all these options, these ways to know about me without really knowing me. But without all these newfangled things, the reality is that I wouldn’t even be musing about the particular someone who’s on my mind. All this technology introduced us and helped us make acquaintance, but now I’m wondering if that’s as far as it can take us. Essentially, I had the very same question for the guy in my world back before all this cool stuff came along that I have for the guy I’m thinking of now: Dude, do you like me or not? Because I kinda sorta like you.

Text ‘yes’ or ‘no’. You know the number.