New Cool Texting Idea: SongBomb®™

The rules are simple.

1. Pick a friend who texts.

2. Pick a song you would like to get stuck in her or his head.

3. Find the lyrics for that song.

4. Every couple of hours, text him or her a stanza from those lyrics in the order and frequency they appear on the radio.

5. Do not reply to any questions.

6. Continue until the song is done. (This could take days.)

7. Conclude with, “This has been a SongBomb®™. I love you.”

[Yelling "TA DAAAA!!" is optional, but encouraged.]

The only fallback to this is that you may get the song stuck in your head while SongBombing®™ your friend. We’re looking into solutions to that problem.

My preliminary attempt at this was SongBombing®™ my friend Josh. The entire process took three days. For the first two days, I heard nothing back. I began to doubt myself. The following is the process of my thinking:

1. Okay, Josh works a lot during the summer. He’s probably just too busy to check his phone. That’s fine. How funny will it be when he checks it and has the entire Believe by Cher song on his phone?!

2. What if a family member died and he’s not texting me back because (a) he’s pissed because this is totally inappropriate right now, especially at this time when a member of his family has died, and (b) he knows it would be really awkward for both of us to text me back saying, “Um…Could you please stop texting me lyrics from that Cher song? It’s really not making my grieving process any easier to be singing, ‘Do you believe in life after love, after love, after love, after love? I can feel something inside me saying I really don’t think I’m strong enough now,’ in my head while attending the wake of my dead family member.”

3. What if he broke up with his girlfriend and for the same reasons listed in #2 he doesn’t really want to be receiving texts that say things like, “There’s no turning back. I need time to move on. I need love to feel strong…Do you believe in life after love,” while he’s driving in a snotty, tearful mess? This would not be good.

4. What if Josh died? How embarrassing would it be to be texting your dead friend and the way you learned about it would be from a family member sending a text back saying, “Stop sending these. Your best friend is dead. It would be great if you could at least stop harassing him now, since he’s dead and all.”  I would be devastated.

Nonetheless, despite all of the horribly morbid possibilities of why he’s not texting back, I pressed on. With three stanzas left, I received this:

OH THANK GOD.

But I had to stick to the rules, so I couldn’t explain it to him until it was done, even though all I wanted to say was, “Omigod Josh, I’ve been playing a joke on you with SongBomb®™ but when you didn’t reply for three days I worried that maybe you were heartbroken, grieving, or dead, but being the insensitive prick that I am, I kept texting you over and over these lyrics and I can’t get Cher out of my head or my dreams and I feel trapped and alone HELP SOS OMG, lylas.” Keeping my cool, I finished the song and texted rule #7, and he replied with this:

“Did you like it?” I asked.

SUCCESS!! Then I explained a bit of it. He said:

Rule #8: You may not SongBomb®™ anyone with the lyrics to Headstrong. That's just cruel.