u moron — i got the text and i agree
the text from dave at 9:47am read u moron, lowercase, no punctuation, full conviction. i read it. i agreed. i replied k. then mom called on sunday and said something kinder, which somehow felt worse. unopened mail on the counter watched both transactions and, predictably, did not weigh in.
writing this from my desk at 10:14am on a wednesday. carla is upstairs in the all-hands on the third floor. i have, give or take, 40 minutes before anyone notices what’s on this screen. let’s try this.
so a few days ago dave sent me u moron. that was the entire message. two words, no apostrophe, no period. it sat on my phone in the dark, glowing with the calm certainty of a verdict. i was not asleep, because i never am at 9:47 — that is the hour my simpsons-grade brain reviews every conversation i botched in 2017. dave’s text fit right in.
i read it. i agreed. i replied k. then i put the phone face-down next to the alarm i would, for eight wakeups, defeat with the 9-min snooze. at no point did i feel offended. that, you understand, is the part i want to talk about.
u moron: a piece of SMS shorthand, a two-word verdict that drops the apostrophe, the predicate, and any pretense of formality. it is what one specific kind of friend texts another at an unholy hour, lowercase, no punctuation, completely without malice. it does not require a reply. k is a fine reply.
U MORON. NO APOSTROPHE. NO REGRET.
u moron, the text i received on a thursday
let me set the scene. it was a thursday, technically a wednesday, depending on whether you respect 2 AM as a day or a haunting. six hours earlier i had sent a DM i should not have sent. i drafted it. i deleted it. i drafted it again. i sent it. then i stared at the chat for forty minutes waiting for a read receipt with the energy of a man who has voluntarily entered small claims court. instead the notification came, and it said: u moron. it was from dave. dave hears everything.
this is the kind of friendship dave and i have. for fifteen years he has trained for moments like this. he picks up on the second ring. he texts in lowercase. he keeps lists about me, allegedly for science. he is the same dave who counts the seventh microwave i killed and laughed nine straight minutes about it. so when dave says u moron at 9:47am, what he means is: i love you, i have receipts, please go to bed.
i did not go to bed. i admired it. there is the long-form moron pillar i have been trying to compile for a year, and there is the moron definition i tried to draft once and never finished. and then there is u moron — two words, three syllables, full diagnosis, no margin notes. dave got there in nine seconds. i am still working on the long version.
who sends u moron, briefly, demographically
now, who actually sends u moron by SMS? not many people. i am fairly sure there is a study somewhere about this, possibly in a magazine my dentist subscribes to. the sender of u moron is, almost without exception, a man between 32 and 47 who has known you since before you had a credit score. women send “u moron” sometimes, but with a comma, or an emoji that softens the blow. men of that age range send it raw. unseasoned.
this is, by the way, hot take territory. if a recipe calls for parsley, you can skip it. parsley is decoration. parsley is a comma after u moron. parsley is what you add when you are not confident the dish stands on its own. dave, who has never used parsley in his life, knows what u moron does and does not need.
the wider taxonomy of two-word txt-speak insults — and i looked into this, insofar as a man can look into anything between 9:47 and 4:30 AM with a phone at 23% — runs from oxy moron, two words allegedly at the high end down to u moron at the operational end. one is a literary device. one is a verdict. dave does not workshop. dave files reports.
the missing apostrophe and what it costs you
here is what i think is happening with the missing apostrophe, and you can write this down. “you’re a moron” is a sentence. it has subject, verb, object. it can be parsed. it can be argued with. u moron cannot. it is too small to grab. it is the verbal equivalent of a fly you cannot catch. you swing at it and it has already left.
by removing the ‘re, dave shaves off the predicate. there is no claim being made. there is, instead, a label being applied. and labels, as anyone who has stared at the unopened mail pile leaning on the kitchen counter for nine consecutive weeks knows, are not arguments. labels are weather. you don’t argue with weather. you put on a jacket. or, in this case, you reply k.
why dave was right
i should explain why he was right. the DM i sent at 8 PM that thursday was, on review, one i had no business sending. i typed it. i deleted it. i typed it again with slightly different wording, as if rewording a bad idea would launder it. i sent it. forty minutes later i was a man in pyjamas next to the third yoga mat under the couch, refreshing a chat window with the thumb of a man pressing an elevator button he knows is already pressed.
dave, somehow, found out. dave has a network. that network told dave, who told me — by way of u moron — that the DM had been a mistake. dave was right. it was. so when i say i agreed with the text, i mean it in the most technical sense. i looked at u moron at 9:47am and the only thing my brain filed back was fair.
this is the kind of stupid you can do quietly to yourself over an evening. no fire. no sparks. no killed microwave. only a phone, a thumb, and forty minutes. dave invoiced me for it in two words.
mom’s interpretation of u moron
mom called on sunday. mom always calls on sunday. mom asked how i was. i said fine. mom said “why do you sound weird”. i said no reason. mom said “what did dave say”. i had not told mom that dave had said anything. mothers know. it’s their power. it cannot be defeated.
so i told her. she paused for the kind of three-second pause that, in mothers, contains an entire department. then she said: “well, dave isn’t wrong, but he could be kinder about it”. mothers do not text u moron. mothers say “oh honey”, which is the same content with infinitely more parsley. and that, somehow, is worse. dave’s verdict ends. mom’s continues. mom’s hangs in the room into monday.
there is, as the moron meaning i once tried to look up would tell you if any of us actually read those entries, no shortage of small daily ways to confirm a label. mom did not call me u moron. mom does not have to. mom invented the form. dave is just a translator.
closing — i replied k
so that is the post. dave at 9:47am. u moron, lowercase, no punctuation, full conviction. mom on sunday with a kinder version that landed harder. an unopened mail pile that observed all of it and did not file an opinion. a DM i regret. a 9-min snooze the next morning. a wednesday at the desk where i am now.
i replied k. k is the right reply. k says received, processed, no further action required. k is the apostrophe-less response to the apostrophe-less text. dave understood. dave did not respond. that is the contract.
carla just walked past my desk. i minimized this. she didn’t say anything. one of these mornings she will, and that will be a different post.
that’s the post. that’s the topic. yours stupidly, idiot again.
P.S. i checked the chat at 9:47 this morning. it still sits there, my k alone, lowercase, complete. it looks, frankly, peaceful. i don’t think i will ever beat it.
