I worked for AT&T for a good, long while and one of the main things people wanted to know was how to turn their phone’s blasted T9 Predictive Text feature off. Personally, I adored it. I liked only having to type a few letters onto the screen before the T9 would remember the likely word I was trying to write and automatically insert it. It remembered my commonly used words. T9 was my buddy, he could finish my sentences!

Along this path, I developed a habit of not looking at what I was writing while texting OR proofreading before I sent the message. It was really handy when I was driving or pretending to pay attention to a conversation at dinner when I was really texting my friends on my phone under the table.

But… my T9 failed me last week. I was shopping at Williams-Sonoma for a barbeque grill cleaner when a friend texted me.

Friend: Hey! What are you doing?
Me: Shopping!
Friend: Where at?
Me: Williams-Sonoma.
Friend: Excuse me? What in the hell are you doing????
Me: I’m looking for one of those scrubber brushes on the end of a big stick.
Friend: I don’t even know what to say.

It was a weird reaction so I checked my sent messages only to see that instead of writing “Williams-Sonoma”, my lovely predictive text had inserted “Williams-Sodomy”.

Thanks, phone.