"When will you be here?" I texted a friend I was meeting for lunch.

"What do you mean?" My mom texted back. "We're not coming up until Christmas."

I immediately realized I had mistakenly texted the wrong person.

"Sorry, Mom," I texted. "Wrong number. NM."

I was about to move on when she texted me back, "What's NM?"

"Never mind," I texted back.

"No, really," she replied. "I want to know."

"Never mind," I repeated.

"Why won't you tell me?!?" she replied.

"I told you," I texted her. "Never mind."

"TRACY," she shouted at me in all caps. "WHAT IS NM?"

"NM means 'NEVER MIND,'" I shouted back.

"Oh," she texted back. "Do you want to talk to your dad?"

"I can't talk to him. This is a text," I reminded her. "Anyway, G2G."

"What's G2G?"

"Got to go," I texted her.

"Wait. Before you go, tell me what G2G is," she demanded.

"I told you — Got to go!"

"Forget it," she replied. Even over text I could tell she was annoyed. "I'll look it up."

"Mom, G2G means 'Got to go,'" I texted her.

"Oh," she texted back.

I sighed audibly, which of course she couldn't hear because we were texting. But I was hoping she was getting my exasperation telepathically.

Most of the time when I've texted my mom, her texts have been a mishmash of out-of-context autocorrects and a shorthand that she made up herself. My mother likes to think she invented text shorthand. I guess I should first give her credit for getting on the texting bandwagon in the first place. Not too many 83-year-olds that I know of have been as quick to adopt new technology as my mom. However, there were so many times I had no idea what she was saying that I had to pick up the phone and call her for clarification to make sure she wasn't actually planning to have some children for dinner (chicken) or go visit her cousin in prison (Princeton). Then there was the time I told her over text that I broke my thumb.

"LOL," she responded.

"What's so funny about me breaking my thumb?" I texted back.

"Nothing! That's terrible," she said.

"Then why did you laugh?"

"I didn't laugh," she responded.

"You said LOL," I texted.

"Yes." She replied. "I was sending you 'lots of love.'"

"Mom, 'LOL' means 'laugh out loud,'" I told her.

"Oh. Well, when I use it, it means 'lots of love.'"

"So, you're basically just making up your own text shorthand?" I replied.

"I guess so," she texted back.

"OK, well, G2G. TTYL." I typed.

"What's TTYL?" she asked.

"Talk to you later," I texted back.

"That's fine, but tell me what TTYL is before you go," she demanded.

I took a deep breath.

"TTYL means TALK TO YOU LATER!" I shouted over text.

There was a pause. And then she texted back.

"Oh. NM."

Tracy Beckerman is the author of the Amazon Bestseller "Barking at the Moon: A Story of Life, Love, and Kibble," available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble online! You can visit her at www.tracybeckerman.com.

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