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Being a mother to two kids is a full-time job. One of the things I had to compromise on when I had my first child was being able to converse on the phone. If you are the mother of a tiny tot, you must be aware of how difficult it is to be able to talk over the phone, especially when your kids are at home and are running about creating chaos. That’s why like most moms of toddlers, I knew it was time to switch to texting. A great thing about texting is that it is fast and effective. On top of that, the person on the other side has no clue if my hair is disheveled or if the kids are screaming their lungs out at the back.
The people I am most in contact with are my other mom friends, and over time, we have come to develop our lingo using emojis. Of course, one can never be completely sure of what each emoji means, but I’m certain I can guess what most moms are trying to get at when they send the following emojis.
😬: I think I may have said something highly questionable, but at this point, I can’t be any less concerned about it.
😂: I’m laughing and weeping at the same time, but these are certainly not tears of happiness. It is more likely that I started laughing, and somehow it got converted into an uncontrollable flurry of tears. But I don’t think they’re related to the joke that was just cracked, which got me laughing in the first place.
😢: I guess I should be feeling bad about what you just said, but I don’t think that is how I feel right now. Regardless of everything, here’s me making an effort to be a little empathetic.
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🤪: I hope you forgive me for never responding to your texts, forgetting your birthday, and also sharing something that you told me was confidential. I’m clearly going crazy right now.
👍: Okay. I’m feeling too lazy right now to type a proper response.
😇: Moms never make use of this emoji.
💃🏻: I’m acting like I am very excited about our upcoming plans, but I’m also regretting this decision at the moment. Why? Because I’m too tired.
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👊🏽: A big congratulations on whatever great news you just shared with me. Because I don’t think I can pull off a real fist bump, I’m going to try this over text.
🤬: When you have no time in your hands to type a swear word, but you want the other person to know that they’d have a good rant coming in if you were free.
🤔: Oh, really… [insert some petty and sarcastic comment in here].
🙈🙊: My kids have yet again embarrassed me. Either they’ve overshared with someone from school or spoken to a total stranger about something related to my bathroom habits and other personal information that my children are aware of.
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😭: I think I just got too engrossed looking at old pictures, and now I feel like crying.
😉: The stuff I said might have seemed a little bitchy, so I’m making up for it with a winky emoji to tell you that I was just kidding.
😍: The picture you’ve sent or what you just said is absolutely lovely, but I can’t come up with a creative and fun response at the moment, so this is the best that I could do.
😞: I think I have just hit a new low that I didn’t imagine I could ever sink to.
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😘: I’m sorry that you are going through a rough patch. I wish there were something I could do to help, except I don’t know how to or I don’t have enough time. But I hope things work out for you!
😳: This is just too shocking for me! And here I thought that very few things in life could surprise me, but I was so wrong. I didn’t expect this at all!
👹👺: I’m feeling so outraged right now that just one angry emoji is not sufficient to contain my anger.
😩: Something awful happened right now, but it is also quite mundane. So here’s me reaching out to people so that they can sympathize with me.
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😷: Sorry we won’t be able to come to the fun thing that was planned for today. Either my kids are sick, or I’m not in a mood to come, and hence I’m using their sickness as an excuse.
💪🏾: We are both strong, amazing boss women.
So from now on, whenever you get a text from another mom friend of yours with very few words, this can be your go-to list to interpret what she is saying.
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