Dear M – This ones dedicated to you -:)

It all started a couple of years ago during an online conversation with this young lady over gtalk. The nature of our conversations was professional in nature. One fine day during such a conversation she said ‘BRB’ and then there was a long pause from her end. Earlier too she had used terms like LOL and some characters like :D, :P and other combinations of symbols like :, :, > and characters, that I didn’t understand much, but I always chose to ignore them thinking that those were just some expressions she used. But when BRB happened, I started wondering ‘What could ‘BRB’ mean?’, That was the first time I had hear the term and I thought really hard. I tried various combinations from my vocabulary of words beginning with B and R and the eureka moment fortunately was not far away. I soon figured out what it meant. BRB means ‘Bath Room Break’. Yes, that’s exactly what I thought :-) and I was happy I could figure it out. Sounds funny now, but yes its true. That’s what I thought it meant :-)

But it sure did puzzle me a bit. ‘Why did she have to tell me where she was going?’ I wondered. I mean she could just say she had to go somewhere or just say something else. Why did she have to be so honest? But then I thought maybe it was just her age factor or then maybe her inability to think under ‘pressure’ :-) - that she could not think of something else to say under those circumstances. Well my thought process was interrupted by her message, ‘I am back’ and we continued our discussion from where we had left before the break.

As days passed I noticed that the frequency of her BRBs gradually increased. At times I was really tempted to tell her not to update me on her every single break. If she has to go, just go. Don’t tell me, just go. She need not be so honest either. At times, especially on days when she had many BRBs, I was also tempted to tell her to seek medical advice on her frequent breaks. But as I said before, the nature of our relationship was purely professional and I didn’t know if she would take offence to my recommendations. So I just kept shut, waiting patiently for her to return from her breaks, only hoping that all was fine with her.

It wasn’t until the day she typed ROFLMAO that I actually figured out what a BRB meant. During a conversation she typed ROFLMAO, and it was actually too cryptic an acronym for my brain to figure out. So when the eureka moment didn’t come even after racking my brains for a long time (and I didn’t want to show my ignorance either by asking her what it meant), I sought assistance from Google. ‘Rolling On Floor Laughing My Ass Off’ was what it meant according to a website on Urban Acronyms and Chat Lingo. Now just out of curiosity I started browsing through the website, trying to update my knowledgebase when I stumbled on BRB there. ‘Be Right Back’ was all it said.

The truth shall set you free. That’s exactly how I felt when I read that. I frantically searched other sites for BRB, but there was no reference of the bathroom anywhere. I was happy that this lady didn’t have a medical problem, and was relieved that her breaks were not actually to relieve herself. I was happier that I was saved from what could have been an embarrassing situation had I actually discussed my concerns on her honesty and her health with her. It would definitely have sent her off doing a ‘ROFLMAO’.

Nevertheless, I think I have a graphical imagination. So when somebody says a ROFLMAO my brain invariably tries to imagine them doing that. So please while talking to me stick to the normal ‘ha ha’ or at the most a ‘lol’ (which by the way, I had figured out that same day that it meant ‘Laughs Out Loud’). I don’t want to imagine you rolling anywhere or running away to take your breaks :-)