A King of Infinite Space

I just got one of those text messages that you save forever--or, at least, for the life of your existing cellphone. The problem is that this particular phone happens to be an iPhone, which means that I automatically save all of my messages, regardless of how trivial or profound they may be.

This got me thinking that, perhaps, unlimited storage is not always a good thing. After all, there used to be a time when my SMS mailbox would fill up and the decision was thrust upon me whether a particular message was worthy of salvation. A select few would progress through multiple mailbox cleanings, but it required the most genuinely sincere expression from a friend or loved one to make it for the long haul.

And now I have one that fits the bill, but it is part of a never ending chain of messages including such deep thoughts as "Don't forget street cleaning," "Come over when u can," "Getting hungry?'"and my personal favorite, "K."

The same holds true for sent messages as well. Back when I had my $30 Samsung clamshell, I chose my words carefully. No predictive text. No QWERTY keyboard layout. Just the impassioned punching of 444 (space) 555 666 888 33 (space) 999 666 88 (exclamation point). These days, I'm nearly as wordy on my phone as I am in this blog. Punctuation is a must. I even capitalize proper nouns. And forget about abbreviations (excepting "WTF" and "OMG," which I've been known to use in ordinary conversation).

Eventually, we will all become kings of infinite space, though I suspect I won't be the only one who remembers back fondly to the time when we were bounded in our nutshells and our inboxes were nice and tidy.