Smiley face, crystal ball


Emojis became a language when children fed up with hearing their
parents say “use your words.” developed a picture language.  Some
linguists say hieroglyphics developed in the same fashion, but
actually it was just the opposite.  Egyptian children sick of hearing
“use your pictures” developed a written language using letters and
hieroglyphics vanished.


The first picture language was symbolic signs.  These were difficult
to understand.  Care labels on clothing show rows of little signs, and
no one knows what they mean.  While passing an expressway rest stop,
my mother was annoyed by a symbolic sign.  “I don’t know why they have
to show a little man sitting on the toilet.”  “It’s a wheelchair.  It
means handicap accessible.”  I told her.


Next came the emoticons.  This was more of a punctuation language.
It needed to be typed and its biggest drawback was that for most of
the emoticons to work they had to be sideways.  People were getting
cricks in their necks trying to read them.  The only people who
thought they were cool were chiropractors.


Emojis appeared quickly, stunning linguists.  Instead of dictionaries
they were listed in smartphones.  It was a language of the young.
The pictures were small and elderly eyes had a hard time figuring out
the little faces.  The younger generation switched to writing all in
emojis.  Business letters from young clients left older CEO’s
scratching their heads.  Prescriptions written by recent medical
school graduates left older pharmacists wondering why a doctor would
prescribe prostate medicine for twenty-year-old women.  Novels and
poetry written in emojis presented problems—they were incapable of
being read aloud.  The books on tape companies no longer could record
contemporary works, and many of the companies went out of business.
This led to a glut of voice actors.  It also led to the general
dumbing down of society.


Soon emoji language became oral.  If a man wanted to ask a woman out
to dinner he said “happy face, chef, pot of spaghetti, bowl of salad,
place setting, place setting.”  If a woman wanted to make an excuse
for refusing the invitation she said “Throw up face, doctor.”  Movies
became confusing, and the talkies disappeared.  The new silent movies
had lines and lines of emojis under the filmed images.  Music became
all instrumental because the emojis did not work well in songs.


A prominent linguist came forward and said “We need a new rosetta
stone.”  Young people had no idea what he was talking about and older
people were too exhausted from trying to read the pictures to do
anything.  It’s the future people.  Smiling face, tipping top hat,
curtsey.