The 5 Texts You Just Can’t Delete

By Kendra

It’s Thursday night, 8:00 PM. Most kids on my campus are pre-gaming in their rooms watching the new episode of The Office, but I am sitting half-comatose in a giant lecture hall, taking notes on Neo-freudians. It’s my own fault for picking such an unfortunately scheduled class, but I still silently curse my Ben Stein-clone of a professor as my phone vibrates for the tenth time since class started. Expecting another “where are u? we’re drinking at Kim’s apt, come!!” text, I glance down at my phone, instead seeing a blinking message: CANNOT RECEIVE MESSAGE. MEMORY FULL.

Frantically, I scroll through my texts, looking for one to delete. I keep scrolling… and scrolling… and then I’m at the end of the list, unable to delete even one. It’s weird, but there are just some texts I can’t bring myself to get rid of. And I know I’m not the only one.

1. The Sweet Text from your Ex: “hey babe. cant wait for tonite. love u and miss u.” It’s a reminder that the jerk we broke up with really was a nice guy, despite it all. He was capable of saying cute things every now and then, he was romantic when it counted, and those cute texts really had the power to make a sh*tty day wonderful…(and okay, maaaybe we also have a slight fear of never having a boyfriend again, so we keep this text as a constant reminder that, hey, at least somebody loved us once).

2. The Barely Comprehensible Drunk Text from your BFF: “omg so ducking drunk. Wher? are u. did I just make out with dave in front of everybodny?” It’s just too fun to whip this one out at brunch the next morning and read aloud to your best friend as she buries her face in shame. We look at these hilarious texts during our Wednesday four-hour bio labs to remind us that the weekend will make all the hard work we’re doing now totally worth it. But most of all, we keep these texts because it’s a reminder that no matter how wasted she was or who she was with when she typed it out, she still had you as a priority, and that’s what a best friend is all about.

3. The Cheesy Yet Cute Text from Your Rents: “Hi honey! Miss u! Hope u r having a good week! Talk 2 u soon! I luv u!” As much as we love school, let’s be honest— we can get a little homesick from time to time. You look at these texts on those days when you wake up with a stuffy nose, you’re late to class, you fail a quiz and you’re PMSing at the same time as your roommates. When everything is going wrong and it seems like the world hates you, at least you can always read that text and know that Mom or Dad love you, no matter what. And it’s always amusing to see that they typed ’2′ instead of to. They must think they are soooo hip.

4. The Hilarious Booty-Call Text from Some Dude: “hey let’s meet up. ur sex is on fire.” OMG this one is just.too.good. Especially if we have decided to stay in that night to work on a paper that’s due Monday so we are stone-cold sober, sitting on the couch in our sweats when we receive it. Out of context, we realize just how ridiculous this random dude is; he really expects us to go hook up with him just because he tapped out a lazy text and recited some song lyric??? If anything, we keep this one just to remind us on our “fat days” that, yeah, we’re hot, and yeah, some guy does want to make out with us, no matter how lame he is.

5. The Thank You Text from Someone Who Needed Us: “hey i just wanna say thanks for last night, i don’t know how i would have made it home without u.” We save this one because it reminds us how good it feels when we are that person to help someone in need. Whether we were holding someone’s hair back while they puked into the toilet, or holding someone upright as we walked them home from an epic party, we’ve all been there. It feels nice to look back on the gratitude every now and then, even if you didn’t know the person very well. And it’s also a reminder that one of these days we are going to be the ones waking up still drunk at 3PM and sending out the same text to someone who helped us the night before. Sometimes you’re the drunken mess and sometimes you’re the hero – and it’s nice to be the hero!