THIS LIFE Fiona O’Brien

A FUNNY THING happened on the way out from the dentist. It had been a humdinger of a session – preparation for two molars to be crowned, and temporaries for same crowns fitted. If you’ve been there, you’ll know.

So I was feeling exhausted, fragile and a little sorry for myself. No reason to be, there was no pain involved, but I’m one of those people who approaches matters medical and dental with the same fatalistic attitude I adopt when stepping on a plane – even if everything appears to be progressing well, something could go wrong, drastically, at any minute. Nerves are hit, engines stall, people haemorrhage to death all the time.

So apart from half my face feeling as if it had turned to concrete, and thoughts of what much nicer things I could have spent all that lovely money on, the overriding emotion I was feeling was relief. It was over, and I was out.

I got into my car, turned on my phone, and clicked on a message that appeared from one of my close friends. ‘I’m fed up with Fiona,’ it began.

I gave my head a little shake and the half of my mouth that could lift in smile did. Silly me! Still groggy from all that lovely, numbing lidocaine and giddy with escape from the dentist’s chair, I obviously wasn’t focusing properly. I looked again. Nothing had changed. My brain then tried another quick computation on behalf of my now stirring emotions – it was a typo! My friend had meant to say, surely, ‘I’m fed up, Fiona’, followed by some amusing anecdote of what had pissed her off. I’ve been clamped/lost the dog/locked myself out… anything at all.

But I read on. And a strange feeling began to uncoil in the pit of my stomach as comprehension dawned. There was nothing at all wrong with the order of words. They were just as they were meant to be, reading exactly as they were supposed to be read. Only not by me. Yes, my friend had sent her text to the wrong person – in this case, me. The recipient of the text message was the subject of complaint and, horror of horrors, she had pressed send before dislodging her train of thought and her complaint from a previous thread between us. It happens. More often than you think. My niece texted her boss by mistake, outlining the exact nature of his excesses and behaviour at the Christmas party. It opened with: ‘ Did you ever see anything like the state of Kevin last night?!’

A friend of mine wrote a ‘therapeutic’ letter to her mother, advised by her therapist not to hold back. She described every little incident she had held against her since childhood, going into exquisite detail about the nature of all her wrongdoings as a parent and how she felt they had affected every relationship this girl had entered into since, including her marriage, which was abusive. This account was supposed to have been written on paper, then brought back to said therapist for discussion at the next session. Instead my friend wrote it as an email, and accidentally – or in a moment of madness – sent it to her mother.

While modern technology has undoubtedly facilitated unimaginable strides in the ease and speed with which we communicate, it has also increased the stakes involved when we get those exchanges wrong. Now, in the event of some catastrophically misdirected piece of communication, there’s no retracting it. This apparently has led to a burgeoning new world of etiquette to accommodate these technological gaffes.

Parents, for instance, routinely ignore toe-curlingly graphic accounts of what their children would like to do to a girlfriend/boyfriend when in receipt of a text message clearly meant for the object of affection and not for them – sent in the throes of alcohol or lust.

Another friend of mine is wary of emoticons, not least because of their size. ‘They’re so bloody tiny,’ she complained. ‘The other day I had to get out a magnifying glass to decipher one. I thought it was the one with its tongue sticking out, when in fact it was the one blowing a kiss!’ This might appear to be taking caution to unnecessary lengths, but I empathise with her. As she correctly pointed out, the entire tone and meaning of the text message was at stake. Was the sender being sympathetic or ironic?

The truth is, words have the power to both hurt and heal, but sent from a mobile or tablet, they can land with the impact of a nuclear missile. Which is why, if you should find yourself in the unenviable position of having to apologise, nothing, but nothing, beats the sound of a familiar voice, or better still, a face-toface encounter. I’m old-fashioned that way. In the words of the old, much-loved BT advertising campaign: it’s good to talk.

A strange feeling began to uncoil in the pit of my stomach as comprehension dawned. My friend had sent her text to the wrong person – in this case, me