My Phone is Vulgar

I have a new "what the kids are doing" to tell you about. There's this thing that some phones can do that I'm pretty sure is powered by the devil himself. I don't even know if it has a name. But basically the way it works is you push this button on your phone and then talk and the phone types what you said. It's lazy texting. But I think every time you use it you sell a piece of your soul.

I have sold a lot of my soul because I use it a LOT. And it's surprisingly usually pretty accurate. I can speak quickly, quietly, slowly, with a slur, in an accent, meow, etc. and it almost always types out exactly what I've said.

Once you finish speaking you have to hit the button again to let it know you're done. Then it thinks for a few seconds and then presents all the text. Sometimes it thinks for a while before doing anything. This doesn't bother me because I just think I probably caught it at a bad time. Like, maybe it was in the middle of something really important like T.V.

On occasion it will think for a while and then spit out text that is not at all what I said. This is usually entertaining. And this is what happened last week when I tried to reply to an email from Val.

Val works on the floor below me, but for a different company. We are both very pleased that this creates a sexual harassment loophole because we sort of work "together" but since we work for different companies, one supreme HR can't freak out at us for any inappropriate behavior directed at one another.

Every afternoon we get together for a quick walk so we can argue about The Good Wife, which we both religiously watch and consider practically a member of our families. We refer to these walks as "Vali," a combination of our names.

Last week Val emailed me to ask me when we were going to do Vali that day. I was at the gym at the time so I responded on my phone and tried to use this devil-voice function.

What I spoke into my phone: I'm at the gym now. Give me about an hour. I need to run up to my office and do something really fast and then I should be ready. I'll text you then. Ok?

[Processing, processing, processing, processing, processing]

What my phone spit out:

I'm sure it meant female dogs.

~It Just Gets Stranger