On a brisk, Friday evening in a mellow, Southern California town, a father came home from work and was greeted by two loving daughters eager to share news of their days and one tired wife eager to share news of just how tired she really was.

“No, seriously. I am like REALLY tired.”

They sat down to what they presumed would be an uneventful family dinner, during which they spent 90% of their time discussing how tacos taste better on Tuesdays versus Fridays simply due to alliteration, when the unthinkable happened.

“BTW, my science report is due tomorrow,” said the oldest daughter, age 9.  She smiled, cleared her plate, and disappeared upstairs.    

A gasp echoed off the kitchen walls. It’s unclear at this time who the gasp came from, but sources close to the family believe it was most likely from the mother.

“Did she just BTW us?” asked the mom.

“I believe she did,” replied the father. “I think it is a form of ‘text talk,’ if you will.”

“I will NOT. Text talk?  She doesn’t even have a phone, for Pete’s sake.”

Both looked at their youngest daughter, age 6, for help. She shrugged her shoulders, giggled, and went back to telling knock-knock jokes, her go-to attention getter as the neglected 2nd child.

Mom’s thoughts raced. “BTW?  What in the world does that mean? Is that an airport? A sandwich? What is she trying to tell us? Oh, Sweet Baby Jesus, we’re losing her!”

Due to the mother’s undeniable state of distress, the father issued the following formal statement:

“There are just so many 3 letter acronyms out there these days. We knew they would eventually make it to our dinner table, but we thought we had more time. Seems like just yesterday she was a baby learning to turn sounds into full words. And here we are now with a pre teen learning to do the opposite: take full words and overly and unnecessarily abbreviate them back into sounds. We can only assume BTW is harmless enough and just hope it’s not a gateway to more serious, potentially offensive acronyms.”

A long road lies ahead in regards to communicating with their soon to be two digit daughter.  But mom and dad are determined to break the codes of pre teen talk, one acronym at a time.  In the meantime, the dinner table will be reserved for full words with actual syllables. And tacos will only be served on Tuesdays.

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