Things have changed greatly in my lifetime. My teenage friends and I thought it hilarious when our pastor made the same mistake, week after week. He would get wound up in his sermon, and somewhere along the way, he would drop in the same phrase – “God is not a respectable person.” We all knew he meant, “God is no respecter of persons,” but we laughed at his misspoken phrase nonetheless.
Now we get many laughs at auto corrects on Facebook and other gaffs.
Don’t you just love the way Facebook words things? After someone’s video is over, a message will say, “______ was live,”? Does that mean they think he’s dead now?
Speaking of death, a sweet friend had several cousins die in a short period of time. After one of the deaths – a distant cousin, she posted, “______ pasted away last night. Remember her family in prayer.” Knowing my friend’s sense of humor and the way she good-naturedly enjoys a laugh at other’s expense, I couldn’t let it pass. When I next saw her, I asked her if that relative was a scrap booker. “No, why?”
“Well, when you posted that she ‘pasted’ away, I thought she had just gotten too enthralled with her hobby.” We both got a laugh at the error.
Another friend tried to refer to a previous message she had posted. Auto correct changed “previous message” to “precious message.” It wasn’t; it was a misspoken one.
But let this next one be a warning to you; always read voiced messages before you hit send. I was at a restaurant with a widowed pastor friend one night. When we were leaving, he got a text message from his daughter. He kept trying to reply but said in frustration that his fingers were too big to hit the correct letters. Trying to be helpful, I suggested he voice the message and even showed him how. He did. The look on his face told me something was bad wrong. He showed me his message. The first sentence was exactly what he had said, but it was followed by some really vulgar words that he had NOT said. “What do I do?” he asked in a panic.
“Delete, delete, delete,” I said. We often wondered what his daughter’s reaction would have been had he hit send instead of delete.
Yes, in my years, our world has changed. Technology has advanced more than we could have ever imagined, but mistakes are still made. I make many and have to laugh at myself, but don’t you dare make one I see or hear, or I’ll share it, for sure.