What You Talkin’ ’Bout, Willis?
How I learned to stop hating acronyms and abbreviations and just LOL.
I’ve been laughing out loud most of my life. I probably do it several times a day, sometimes in public and for no apparent reason.
But LOL? I started doing that a little later in life. I probably would have tried it much earlier, if I’d known WTF it meant. (For those still not in the know, it’s “laughing out loud” or “laugh out loud.”) I was introduced to it more than 25 years ago, at the dawn of the email era, back when “You’ve got mail” still meant the postman was at the door. (In this era of text messages and social media, how quaint do movies like You’ve Got Mail and The Postman Always Rings Twice seem?)
My friend Jason and I had been spending a large part of the work day exchanging emails, thoroughly excited about this novel form of remote conversation. It was the first time we’d ever communicated with each other when we weren’t face to face or talking on the phone. Apparently, Jason had discovered a new side of me, the me that comes out in writing but not necessarily in oral conversation. “Until today, I never had any idea that you were so dry and sarcastic,” he wrote shortly before quitting time. “LOL!”
“LOL”? What is that supposed to mean? I wondered. I knew it was some kind of abbreviation…
