‘Instant' communication may be too fast for slow people

What we’ve got here is not a failure to communicate. If anything, we’ve got so many ways to interact that we can’t decide what to do.
   OK, suppose I’ve got some good gossip to pass along to a friend who is close to the situation involved.
   The first inclination is to call. Just pick up the cell phone and have your say.
   But wait. What if the person on the other end of the line can’t really talk when answering the phone? And you’d like to get feedback on your morsel.
   So maybe you ought to text instead. That way the message is waiting if your intended target is in a meeting or otherwise tied up. And that person can get just back to you when he or she gets a chance.
   However, you might want to share your info with a number of people. Calling or texting each one could take some time.
   So, come to think of it, perhaps an e-mail would be even better. You can send to multiple sources with a few clicks of the mouse and be a lot more efficient. And an e-mail has the same advantage. It, too, will be waiting. And, frankly, people generally are a little more inclined to reply in depth when they take the time to check their electronic mailbox.
   On second, or third, or fourth, or fifth thought, this might just be the time to utilize one of those social networking deals that you signed up for and hardly ever use.
   Yeah, let’s go for Facebook. That’s so much more cool than that old MySpace thing. Except you have to be careful when sending Facebook messages because you could throw something out there that the whole electronic world could see. Now wouldn’t that be embarrassing, to have the butt of your rumor-mongering reading along with all your buddies? That would be as bad as back in the olden days when you were hanging around in chat rooms.
   What!?!? You say that sort of public embarrassment could be saved by sending out a letter? Come on. Do you realize how slow snail-mail is? Shoot, might as well send a note by carrier pigeon or Pony Express. Besides, have you seen the price of a stamp these days? It isn’t that cost-effective to spend almost a half a buck to get your two cents worth in.
   What to do? What to do?
   Ah, there’s a reasonable solution. Since the person you intended to talk with happens to be sitting in the office across the room, you could do it the old-fashioned way. Just get up and walk over so you can converse in person. Saves a call, some texting, key strokes for the e-mail or going to the post office. Plus, you get immediate feedback. This talking thing works pretty good for something that has been around since the start of time.
   But, you know, all this over-thinking about relaying the information has caused you to forget what you were going to say in the first place. So forget the whole thing. Maybe the warden was right — what we’ve got is a failure to communicate.