Communicationally incompatible

When did mobile phones become the main source of communication? I pretty much only communicate with my friends via text message these days, and I hate it. I never got the knack of texting, I'm forever pushing buttons one too many times and having to go through all the options again to find the letter I want. I can't even do 'text speak' because I spend more time thinking of what the shortened version should be than I would just typing the out the whole word. And I have a tendency to be overly wordy anyway, so fitting what I really want to say into the tiny number of characters I have for a text is a long and painful process. Others seem to do it so easily, and I always feel pressured to answer quickly, not that I usually see messages right away anyway. I tend to only take the phone out of my bag to use it, otherwise I check it maybe once a day if I remember. I don't carry it around with me at work or at home, so if I'm not in the room when the message comes through it could easily be a day or two before I read it. And it annoys me that text messages apparently give us permission to ignore the normal rules of politeness. I have an almost pathological need to be polite, and having to condense everything I want to say into short, sharp sentences seems so abrupt and impersonal. Last week I sent a long message that ended with a question, and the only reply I got was 'Y'. That was it, one letter. I assume it stood for 'yes' but it could also have meant 'why'. It's hard not to feel a little put out that someone won't even take the time to tap out an entire three letter word, whichever one it is. And even though I've told people that reception at my house is terrible, and I know they have my home and work numbers, most people will still only call on the mobile. Then I have to either run out to the backyard to find that small spot where I get decent reception, or stand on the footpath to take the call. I still feel faintly embarrassed talking on the phone in public anyway, so I'm really not keen to subject the entire street to my inane one-way conversation.

What was wrong with email? Hardly anyone emails me anymore. I can be as wordy as I like in an email, and I can spell check. (I'm obsessed with spell checking! I love that I can automatically spell check everything I write online. It just annoys me that it doesn't correct grammar as well, I'm horrified when I discover I've used an apostrophe where there shouldn't be one or the wrong there/their/they're. And I know 'communicationally' is not a real word, my spell checker told me.) I can use whole words and proper punctuation, and I can be polite and make chit chat in an email. There's no room for polite conversation in a text, no 'how are you', no talk of family or work or what you've been doing. I miss that. Texts are all business and very little friendliness. Email is much more civilised, in my opinion. I know you can send texts as emails and emails as texts these days, but that just seems even more complicated to me. It's hard not to think communication was easier when the only options were mail and telephone. Now it's great to have choices, but it's really just another way to make me feel incompatible with just about everyone else.