Unsend
written by Ophira Eisenberg
Ninety-nine percent of my communications has become email and texting. I like it. It’s passive, somewhat unobtrusive, and most of the time it’s more efficient than a phone call. Yet, in all the leaps and bounds e-communication has made with streaming video, size of attachments, graphic choices, and the sorts, I am still waiting for the most important bit of software to be invented; and that is an Unsend application. There has to be a way, after you click on that Send button in a fit of fury, or lovesick drunkenness, or just plain disregard for the fact that you accidentally Replied All, to stop the madness before it flies through a binary sea of zeros and ones and ends up in the undesired recipient’s Mailbox.
I live in a state of panic every time I forward a snide, little comment to someone that I’ve accidentally BCC my entire contact list somehow, or due to the speed at which I’m replying and moving through my Inbox, I’m sending the wrong person a response to the wrong question. I almost had a heart attack the last time I accidentally Replied All. And I know I’m not the only one. You’d think with such an instantaneous medium that will definitely fall prey to being abused by impulsive, non-thinking humans (such as myself) that that would be the first application to be built.
At least with other written forms, like say…letters – I know, IMAGINE writing one of those – there was a teensy chance it could get lost in the mail. I lucked out with that once in the deep dark medieval past.
Before I started performing comedy, I had two jobs: one as a receptionist at an engineering firm that produced sewage pumps, so I was working for a place that literally sucked shit, and the other as a house sitter. You’d think house sitting would be a sweet gig, as its does mean living for free. But, it wears on you. You start to feel invisible, night after night, staying somewhere that reflects nothing of you. It doesn’t matter how long you stare at the framed photos of their family, their vacations, or their wedding, you will never be there or know those people. The only imprint I was leaving in that house was my butt on the couch from spending countless nights in front of the TV, lying there until 3 or 4 in morning with that flavor of deep depression where the idea of sleeping sounds like too much effort.
I started romanticizing about my college years as if they were a golden era, completely forgetting that anxiety of final exams, having twenty-five page papers due on “Derrida and Structuralism”, and avoiding roofies. I started longing for my old college boyfriend Dave. We hadn’t connected since our messy break-up now years ago. I forgot all about our endless fighting, his inability to connect emotionally, and his not-so-mild drinking problem. I desperately wanted that wonderful and joyous relationship back.
And then I did the thing you are never ever, ever, EVER, supposed to do in that situation.
Facebook him you ask?
No, this was before that.
Google him you query?
Yeah, it was before that too.
I called him.
And he didn’t have call display so he picked up.
And then I called him the next night. Our conversations were not romantic. They were fast and full of frenetic banter with no pauses because if there was a second of dead air the question of whether either of us was seeing anyone could come up. I was tormented by the warm feelings I was having for him all over again but I couldn’t work up the courage to admit my feelings to him. What if he rejected me all over again? What were the chances he felt the same way? What if we had another chance?
One night after I came home once again frustrated and flushed from the sewage pump office, I tore off my spice nylons and decided I would tell Dave exactly how I really felt by writing him a letter. Pen to paper. Yes, a stamp would be involved. I wanted to tell him in writing how much I thought we’d both changed, and that maybe, if he was so inclined, we could give “us” another chance.
I wrote that letter as fast as possible and by the end it was five pages of pathetic, apologetic, I’m-begging-you-please-take-me-back drivel. I searched for an envelope in their bureau and kitchen drawers like time was running out. I knew I only had a small window of time to get this letter off before I talked myself out of the whole thing. Not able to find an envelope, I decided to get crafty and make one by folding a piece of paper in half and taping up the sides. And then I ran out to the mailbox in the middle of the night. The second after I heard the sound of the mail chute slam shut, instead of relief I felt a rush…of pure, unpasteurized DREAD.
A week passed and Dave called. He called to tell me two things. One was he was engaged to get married. The second was that he had received my letter – sort of. I was in a catatonic state, waiting for humiliation to smack me in the face. But Dave told me that he hadn’t received a letter so much as an envelope, but that was it. It seemed that my makeshift envelope had come “untaped” on its journey, and all that was delivered was an empty vessel. I took a deep breath, thanked as many gods as I could think of and wished him congratulations. We said our good-byes. This time I meant it.
Well, until Facebook was invented of course. Now we’re sorta friends, I guess. I have two emails and a status update that he “liked” to prove it.
I would have never been saved if it had taken place via email. Although I did find out that the geniuses at Google developed a little app for Gmail called Mail Goggles to help stop you from sending drunken emails. Basically it asks you to do a series of simple math problems before it will deliver your late-night typo-filled message. I need something a little more sophisticated than Mail Goggles; like a series of pop-ups that demands I take a walk to think things over before I send, or one that reminds me that he’ll never get it anyhow so put down the mouse and step back from the iBook. It’d be helpful to have a little bit of software that suggested I add some exclamation marks because the email reads very bitchy and angry, and how about just a little simple pop-up that says, “Are you sure you want to REPLY ALL?” That might break a few less hearts.
But maybe it’s that whole Spider-Man thing of “with great power comes great responsibility” thing. “If you can’t handle the power of Earthlink then we certainly can’t give you jet boots.”
Things get misconstrued too easily. At the end of the day, if I’m ever as lucky or noteworthy for some one to publish a biography on me, my fear is that it will be comprised entirely of my Sent Items that paint a distorted Picasso-esque picture of me. My Yahoo folders will never yellow and disintegrate or have the ability to get lost.
Ophira Eisenberg is a comic and writer from New York.
Visit OphiraEisenberg.com.