Be Careful What You Text

On Sunday I felt inspired to visit my parents. My son had returned a TV he no longer required and I needed to bring it to my dad who had a use for it. I called me parents to make sure someone would be home and discovered that earlier in the day, my dad had slipped on the ice and fell down. He had so much pain he couldn't get up to walk. My wife and I headed right over.

We had a good chat with both my parents and I came up with a nickname for my dad that referred to a female ice skater from the 1976 winter Olympics. Three of us had a good laugh at my dad's expense. We all wondered if any ribs were broken but my dad assured us that they were not.

Monday morning I got up and went skiing with my wife but had to leave after an hour so we could go help my son move to a larger apartment. Shortly after we started carrying furniture I received a text from my mom about how she had taken my dad to the hospital because of the intense pain he felt. Sure enough, he had 7 broken ribs with 1 broken in 2 places. Fortunately my son's old apartment is right next to the hospital where my dad was admitted. We finished loading the moving van and quickly unloaded it at the new apartment. Then we headed to the hospital to visit my dad.

Both of my sons headed to the hospital in one car while the rest of us followed after unloading more stuff. I forwarded the hospital room number and information so they could find their grandpa without having to bother any of the medical staff. Naturally I sent the information to the family text group we have set up but did not provide any other information about who was in the hospital because most of the family helped with the move. Unfortunately my oldest daughter had to work and didn't have any context.

About 2 seconds after I sent my text, my daughter shot back a message asking who is in the hospital. Naturally I filled in a few details as we still had some stuff to unload and wanted to get to the hospital ourselves. She immediately followed up with a phone call asking for more information and I provided them while finishing up the job at hand.

This short experience illustrates a very important communication problem. Sometimes we don't provide enough background information in our conversations. This is especially true with text messages where we are trying to provide as short a message as possible.