If there’s one wonderful thing that iPhone dependency has added to our lives, it’s the endless joy of mum texts. (And sexts, too. Not at the same time.)
Mum texts that you get when you’re home at Christmas asking what you want for tea, the confessional ones received on the train back to the city which tell you, happily, that there’s a bottle of wine and a pack of three new tea-towels in your bag and the long, epic streams of consciousness which begin, heart-breakingly, ‘you don’t have to reply to this’ and tell the life story of Nina from accounts who you met once, ten years ago, for two minutes. ‘Thought you might like to know!’ it ends, cheerily.
But by far the thing I love most about receiving texts from my mum is her use of emojis. The Mumoji is here and it’s brilliant.
Reese Witherspoons mum led the Mumoji crowd valiantly earlier this month when she sent her daughter series of texts ending in HEART which, of course, went viral. When I saw it, I looked down at my own phone to see a classic text from my mum: ‘Love you,’ it said. Then: ‘MOUSE DOG SMILEY FACE’.
My mum’s loved them since the first day she applied that extra-thick protective screen guard in the manner of all mums everywhere to her brand new and first, bright blue iPhone. Glasses expertly poised as she requested a ‘check text’ from me so she could hear the ringtone, she declared the text tone was more than satisfactory and stared down at the dancing lady I’d sent.
And then she did an uncanny impression of the emoticon with inward facing arrows for eyes, with a tiny upturned smile. ‘Oh,’ she said, head hanging. ‘I don’t think I have those.’
Minutes later, after I’d added the keyboard, I got five smiley faces in a row. It was the beginning of a new era.
Since then, she’s wildly taken up the plight of the under-utilised mouse, and often the puppy, too. Most texts we exchange, no matter what their subject, end like this: ‘Love you loads! xxxxx MOUSE’. Occasionally there’s ‘Love you xxxxx PUPPY SMILEY FACE’, ‘KOALA’ too, and at Christmas there were the seasonal additions of ‘Love you xxxx TREE, PRESENT’. ‘WINE GLASS’ makes an appearance on abject Fridays.
A quick survey of my mates revealed that their parents are the same. They described aubergine-based mishaps and awkward exchanges involving ‘laughing-crying-face’. ‘She sent me that when I got made redundant,’ one, solemn, friend said.
Wonderfully, when I text my mum to ask about emojis, she text back immediately asking ‘What is that?? PUPPY, HEART.’
When I explained and asked her why she likes them, she says ‘it cheers me up when I see them’. And it does a bit, doesn’t it?
Maybe we should all be a bit more Mumoji. MOUSE.