How many parents does it take to read a teen text message?

What has the world come to that I have to use the internet to help figure out what a teen text message means?  And guess how stupid I felt when I looked up IK only to find out it means, I KNOW!? It takes so much brain power that I can't afford to waste, why can't they just speak in plain English?!  I am still laughing at a post on Facebook of someone who just figured out LOL means laugh out loud, and not lots of love :) However, before I was in the know on this new text lingo, I too thought LOL was lots of love too.

We have IDK, JK, IK, OMG, LOL, LMAO, and the list goes on and on...is this what the older generation felt like when Elvis gave his first pelvic thrust on TV? And he sure looks tame compared to Lady Gaga now, doesn't he?  All I have to say is thank goodness for the Internet slang/text look up sites or else we old folks would never know what they are saying.  So, our detective work begins with catching the text before it is erased, then using the Internet to "decode" the text, then follow up with our teens based on what we think we figured out they and their friends were saying! I don't know about you, but by the time I get to the kid, I am plum worn out...what happened to just being able to eaves drop over the phone, the home phone that is...you know the ones that used to hang on our wall and have a cord attached so we could never get too far out of ear shot from our parents.  Or of course, they could always just go pick up another line and listen right in to both sides of the conversation.

These days kids would just rather send text and forget the real communication of actually hearing the others voice.  It seems sad to me, but I guess times are a changing and it isn't going to change based on my opinion that is for sure.  Not much else I can say, I suppose all I can do is smile and just move on :) but I can still miss the good old days of hanging on the phone just to be able to continue to hear their voice and say, "You hang up, no you hang up first, no you..."