By Masudur Rahman

Senior Reporter

It’s a story that’s all too typical.

A guy knows most of his schoolmates are doing it, but he still abstains from it all through high school. He feels uncool and socially inept for not doing it when so many of them started doing it in high school. Hell, some people even started doing it in middle school!

“I’m not going to let peer pressure get to me,” he says to himself. “I don’t need to do it to be cool. I don’t need to do it to feel better about myself.”

His abstinence wasn’t because of religious reasons or parental oppression — for him it’s a personal decision. He doesn’t need to do it to have good self-esteem, or even to feel close to people, he says to himself.

Then the guy goes to college. He sees people doing it even more rampantly and really starts to feel left out. But somehow he manages to hold on for almost two whole years.

Then he finally succumbs to temptation, and near the end of his second year at college he loses his virginity — his text-message virginity.

This guy, dear readers, was me. It’s a story I haven’t shared with anyone before and it feels nice to finally get it off my chest.

 It’s not like I was morally against sending and receiving text messages. For a while, it was simply about money — I just couldn’t afford a cell phone plan. That’s what I told my friends who were annoyed that they couldn’t reach me when they wanted to, unless I was at home and they called my land line.

Then I got a job and couldn’t use the “too poor” excuse anymore. To be honest, money was never the problem. I simply hated talking to people on the phone. I didn’t want to be a glutton for punishment and carry a cell phone with me all the time. And I didn’t want to be available to talk to people 24/7.

Another reason was that I was just turned off by schoolmates’ textual promiscuity.

Everywhere I looked, people were doing it. I’ve seen people do it at the movies, between classes, during classes, while watching TV, while eating and even while talking to another person. And most of them weren’t just exchanging texts with one special person that they cared for deeply — they were doing it with anyone who’d text back.

 I saw everyone doing it around me, and I thought to myself: is this really what it takes to feel close to people? Doesn’t the promiscuity with so many  different people just cheapen the bond between all of them?

I didn’t understand until I became textually promiscuous myself.

Exchanging text messages with people didn’t cheapen my relationships with them — it actually enhanced them.

It was easier to get hold of people who would otherwise be unavailable to talk on the phone, whether they were at work, in a class, at a loud basketball game or at a party.

It was also something for me to occasionally pass the time with at work or in some classes. For any professors reading this, I never did it in any of your classes — I only do it in my other classes.

Looking back, I may have been overdoing it at a certain point. During this summer, I became increasingly bored at work and needy for human interaction. I knew I wasn’t doing it nearly as much as some of my schoolmates or colleagues, but for me, it was a lot. Since then, I’ve been consciously doing it less and less.

I don’t regret doing it though. I no longer think there’s anything wrong with people engaging in textual intercourse, or even with being textually promiscuous.

Although I do feel that there should be a minimum age limit. Let’s face it — no 13-year-old really needs to send text messages. TV shows and movies have exploited textual behavior and twisted it so teenagers and even pre-teens think they need to do it to be cool.

I only have one regret. In the fervency of my past textual exploits I forgot to  keep track of the first time I did it — the time I lost my text message cherry. Was it to tell a friend where we were meeting to play soccer? Was it to ask a classmate when the homework was due? Or was it to my BFF Jim, replying to him “idk, how many grls have turned u down 2nite?”

I’d like the think that the first time isn’t really special, that it’s just as meaningless as the other times — but I’d be lying to myself.

So the only advice I have for someone who hasn’t done it yet is this: don’t do what I did — don’t let your textual conquests get in the way of what really matters. And don’t give in to peer pressure or compare your text life with fictional characters from TV or movies. Do it with someone you care about and do it when the time feels right.