Just sexted ... and feeling dirty

FROM MY CORNER ... with Ann Brunswick

Your favourite columnist has become the unwitting victim of a sordid sexting – and I want to tell you how it happened. Well, within reason, seeing this is a family newspaper and there are standards of common decency to maintain.

It all began this Monday past, when I was making my way back into Brisbane by CityRail after servicing a client on the northside the previous evening and being invited to stay overnight – on his couch, please! – after we had concluded our transaction. I was standing in one of the new quiet carriages – you know the ones, where people still talk inanely and loudly on their mobiles about what the office sociopath has been up to of late or why they won’t be coming out on Friday night to get plastered – when I was struck down by this sordid and disgusting text message.
Firstly, don’t get me wrong. This sexting did not come directly into my unstate-of-the-art, turn-of-the-last-century Nokia brick mobile. But it may as well have done, for the impact was no less unsettling.
You all know how hard it is to block out those inane mobile phone conversations; in much the same way, my eyes were inadvertently drawn to a pretty young thing standing beside me who was texting away merrily on her modern device. It might have been a smart phone, but she certainly wasn’t being too bright as she went about her business.
Well, your Ann almost fainted on the spot. “I felt you harden as I moved my hand inside your underwear” was the message the blur of both hands created in a flash. How do young kids do that so fast? Type, I mean. Not putting their hands inside someone else’s delicates.
Naturally enough, I immediately averted my eyes. I’m not by nature a voyeur. I know I had accidentally observed a very private message and did not want to intrude any further. But it did get me to thinking. This frail slip of a thing could have been my granddaughter, for goodness sake. She hardly looked like she’d reached her teenage years, let alone someone who knows the hard facts of life, so to speak.
“I moved your mouth to my breast,” she continued to type. Well, yes, of course I had turned back to see what she was going to add next. And I make no apologies for that. You would have too!
So what was this wee lass up to? Maybe she’s one of those people who do very well writing Mills and Boons novels. Maybe she’s involved in a creative writing class at some sort of high school that I certainly never attended? Perhaps she just likes to type dirty. Maybe she indeed has a sex partner, and she simply wanted the vicarious thrill of reliving last night’s activities.
But I guess the upshot of all this is – and I hope I don’t sound like an old fuddy-duddy when I say this because I truly don’t think I am – is simply: do young things have to carry on like this in public. I suppose I should at least be thankful that she was using a relatively standard sized mobile phone screen. God knows what an eyeful I would have copped if she had been texting on one of those new-fangled I-paddy thingos.
All your Ann knows is that after stepping off the train at Fortitude Valley she had to rush to the toilets to dab some cold water over her still-pretty face to try to wash away the solid blush that had settled there.
Ann will be maintaining a steady outward gaze by a window the next time she has to travel on the city’s suburban rail network!

***

Can I trouble you with one more story of woe on the city’s suburban rail network? I must have been in an absolute reverie when I made a similar overnight trip to the northern suburbs recently because, when I touched on at Toombul railway station the next morning, the screen told me I had been pinged $10, taking my GoCard balance into deficient.

Your Ann is a very reasonable person, so I put my hand up and thought, fair enough. I obviously did not touch off the previous evening. I will make the point here, though, that the last time this happened the fee was $5. Can’t remember ever hearing that the authorities had decided to double the default to $10 to catch patrons playing silly buggers on long trips.
Anyway, I topped up the card with another $10 and returned to the touch pad to register my morning trip. The screen came up with words to the effect that no charge had been applied. End of transaction or some such thing. Not being exactly sure what that meant, I touched on again; this time the screen telling me that I had already touched on.
Any of my loyal readers guessed yet where this is heading? Yes, sure enough, when I touched off at Fortitude Valley a quarter-hour later the screen said I had been pinged another $10, putting me back in the red!
I talked to the man in the window who printed out my recent GoCard history and showed me what had transpired. Now here’s the rub. Without, I’m sure, any authority of his part to say this, he assured me that the second $10 fee was indeed a mistake because “the system is not foolproof”. I think he was talking about me there.
Further, he added, after I informed him that my generous offer to accept blame for not having touched off properly the night before might have to be rescinded now that I knew the system wasn’t totally Annproof, then he was pretty sure I’d get a $20 credit.
But here’s the rub – and I’m sure you all know what comes next. Some time soonish, when I’m feeling composed and settled and I’m pretty convinced that nothing will get me hot under the collar, I’m going to have to ring the TransLink number and state my case for the return of at least some of my hard-earned lost in the space of 24 hours.
Does anyone out there in Indieland think that that procedure is not going to end in tears? I’ll report back on how I went ... that is, as long as I’m not still on the phone waiting patiently for an operator to finally answer “as my call is important to them”.