Keeping Up with Text Messaging Lingo

At a district staff development workshop yesterday, we were given a quiz on text messaging lingo to see how many we could make sense of.

At first, I thought it would be no problem.  I do not consider myself to be an old, out-of-touch teacher.  I text, I watch television, and I feel pretty up on current trends in technology.

But I got schooled yesterday.

Here was the quiz:

1)  LOL
2)  OMG
3)  TTYL
4)  POS (NO, this is not what you're thinking)
5) TOS
6) LSHIPMP


I was good with the first three:
1)  LOL = laughing out loud
2)  OMG = oh my goodness (Most people probably mean 'oh, my God,' but I don't very much like that use of the acronym.  Actually, I don't like it at all).
3)  TTYL = talk to ya' later

I thought I knew number 4
4) POS = piece of ****

But I was wrong.

It actually stands for Parent Over Shoulder, which loosely translates to "I'd respond to your message, but I can't right now because whatever I was about to send you is too inappropriate or embarrassing to allow my parent(s) to see.  Hang on, and when said parent(s) leave, I'll send you the message that I originally intended to send you."

So, you can see why the cool kids need these short acronyms.  The above translation would take up way more characters than a standard text message can contain.

Similarly to number four, number five (TOS) stands for Teacher Over Shoulder, which carries with it the same general idea as number four.

I'm guessing that one is more widely used among high school students.  If I was over somebody's shoulder while they were texting, that phone would be mine before their quick little fingers even had time to type TOS (as per our school's "no electronics from bell to bell" policy).

And now for the doozy.

LSHIPMP

None of us in the room had any idea until our instructors told us that the first letter stood for "laughing."

Then, yours truly solved the puzzle.  Just like this lady did after only knowing the letter "L."



(Side note: It is my dream to be a contestant on Wheel of Fortune. I am convinced that I, too, could pull off something like this woman did).

Anyway, back to the task-at-hand:

LSHIPMP

Have you figured it out?

The answer is:
Laughing So Hard I Peed My Pants.

Because apparently Laughing Out Loud just doesn't quite convey the desired amount of emotion.