I used to drink. And when I drank, I readily admit I was all-too-frequently guilty of “drunk dialing” in the middle of the night for little or no reason at all. I was just SO SURE that what I had to say was so important and/or insightful that it couldn’t wait until morning!

Had I managed to wait until morning before I either gave someone a piece of my mind, or pledged my undying love, my common sense might have had a fighting chance to prevail. Then I’d have had the option of simply slinking off into a corner in Chagrin (about 25 miles east of Cleveland) while I nursed my hangover.

These days, drunk dialing has had a technological upgrade. It’s been replaced by drunk texting, which is, in my humble opinion, exponentially worse for two major reasons.

1) When you drunk text, there’s a written record for the recipient to scroll back through, wondering what the hell was really going on with the sender, and whether the police department or the local sanitarium should be notified.

2) Those little letters get even smaller “under the influence,” and there’s a greater chance that a person’s fat fingers will miss their mark and autocorrect will try to guess what word you were aiming for, most often erroneously.

Life is full enough of little stupidities like that to sort though. Fortunately, I’ve discovered several magic buttons on my phone to use in just such emergencies. One of those buttons turns the phone OFF when I go to bed. The other one DELETES such mindless insanity faster than you can type “Sledgehammer!”

Which is, as it turns out, a heavily booze-loaded 12-ounce drink that has been blamed as the underlying cause of much texting drivel in the recent past. (Check out the small print at the bottom of the image to the right—it’s priceless!)

No worries, I don’t delete friends as quickly as I delete text messages. It just serves as a vivid reminder of how much better I am now that the strongest thing I drink when I go out is club soda and cranberry juice!