Front Porch: Readers’ talk-to-text misadventures offer many LOL moments

If misery loves company, then so does mortification.

Or, to be completely candid, if a columnist regularly humiliates herself via texting, it’s comforting to know she’s not alone.

In my last column, I wrote of my ongoing struggle to send accurate texts using the talk-to-text method on my alleged “smartphone.”

For example, just a few days ago, I sent my son Zach a text reminding him that our “animal corned beef and cabbage meal” is coming up.

“Annual,” I corrected. “Good grief, I just wrote a column about this!”

I invited readers to share their miscommunication woes with me. Their responses have offered many LOL moments. In fact, Mae Greenwood wrote, “I’ve often thought that my phone and I should go on the road with a comedy routine.”

She’d be in good company. Heidi Rudy shared this gem.

“My husband works as a home loan officer. He was texting with a client who happened to be a doctor about the bank’s loan programs and said that he has fantastic home loans. Instead, it read he has ‘testicle home loans.’ The doctor replied that he thought the testicle loan sounded interesting but would prefer a more conventional home loan.”

Beverly Gibb knows where I’m coming from.

“When my ‘clever idea’ turned into a ‘cleaver idea,’ I was stunned,” she wrote. “It bothered me all day, and I finally corrected it. I, too, stick with one finger! My thumbs have arthritis!”

Pam Beasley felt my pain. When her employer decided to provide her with a networked computer system, she sent multiple emails without noticing the program had auto-corrected her name to Beastly.

“Possibly, some of my contacts thought I was indeed a beastly person?” she wondered.

Karen Buck tried to help.

“Someone showed me the swiping method where you run your fingers over the letters you want. If the wrong word shows up hitting the backspace arrow erases the whole word,” she wrote. “Give it a try! It takes some practice, but it’s a whole lot quicker than tapping each letter.”

Alas, I have tried this method, but the results aren’t printable in a family newspaper.

You may remember that my “Butter Dum Fudge” is now part of our family lexicon. I’m not the only one whose texting error has become family verbiage. Marty Huseman has a text group with her sisters. Her sister Betty composed a text to them that began, “Hi Sweetie Steers,” instead of “Hi Sweet Sisters.”

“We laughed and giggled via cyberspace, sending bull and cow emojis back and forth,” Huseman said. “It has become part of our lexicon and we use it frequently as a term of affection.”

She’s not alone in her family faux pas.

Connie Emry’s phone changes her sister Midge’s name into a word that starts with b and ends with ch. They are still speaking.

Diane Cook and her daughter enjoy playing the New York Times game “Wordle,” but Siri has decided they play “Turtle.”

Recently, Cook had some soup at a restaurant that was “tooth thick.”

“It was too thick, of course, but tooth kind of makes sense,” she wrote.

When Cheryl Weber flew to Mexico City to visit her daughter, she had a simple request.

“I talk-texted my daughter and asked her to please set up an Uber for me,” she wrote.

Only problem? It came out as, “Can you please stay sober for me?”

As if I’m not traumatized enough by my texting gaffes, Charlotte Applegate provided fodder for further worry – blackmail.

“I was verbally texting with a friend while I was driving; her reply came over the speaker, ‘I thought you didn’t like that word and told your daughter not to use it in front of you.’ ” Applegate wrote. “That could be only one word, and unfortunately, Siri told her preparing a baked potato bar was (f#@K&%5E) easy instead of fairly easy. My dear friend took a screenshot of my text and has kept it for two years!”

Of course, talk-to-text isn’t always the culprit of misunderstandings. One of my favorite gaffes came courtesy of autocorrect.

Diane Delanoy was helping her mom move.

“I sent an email with only a subject line that said “I canceled your autopay,” she wrote.

Well, that’s what it was supposed to say. However, her “smartphone” changed it to “I canceled your autopsy.”

Obviously, her mother was relieved to have both things nixed.

Moving on.

My cellphone-induced mortification hasn’t been in vain. It’s offered business inspiration to Doug Zwischenberger.

“I thought I was the only one with a stupid phone until I read your article,” he wrote. “I even told my wife that I was going to invent a new phone and call it ‘Stupid Phone,’ and I would be rich because everybody would buy one as they would know exactly what they were getting and wouldn’t feel like they were taken in by some slick marketing lingo that promised them a ‘Smart Phone.’ ”

I think he’s onto something. When it’s time to upgrade (downgrade?) my current phone, I’ll look for Zwischenberger’s model.

Cindy Hval can be reached at dchval@juno.com. Hval is the author of “War Bonds: Love Stories from the Greatest Generation” (Casemate Publishers, 2015) available at Auntie’s Bookstore and bookstores nationwide.