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Confusion gripped Jolene Bryce '12 this Saturday night when she received a text message from Philip Tezzo '12 reading: "Are you gout? Wanna comb over?"
"I was a little insulted at first. I know my hair is thin. He doesn't have to be cruel," said Bryce.
She quickly remembered, however, that Tezzo has abnormally large thumbs. "It all made sense!" she said. "Obviously the logical explanation is that his enormous thumbs were an early-stage symptom of gout, swollen by the uric acid crystals in his bloodstream. And now the gout has gotten so bad that he's actually self-identifying with the condition. No wonder he lashed out at me with that comb-over crack. He must be in so much pain."
Unbeknownst to her, Tezzo was not in fact suffering from gout, but from clumsy typing coupled with slight intoxication. Tezzo was aware of his typos but decided against correcting them with a follow-up text. "I don't want to seem desperate," explained Tezzo. "It's always best to say as little as possible, and that way you come off really cool."
This assertion may not have held true earlier that day, when he texted Bryce, "totally in a farty mood. Let's meet up later!"
Lamenting the error, Tezzo shook his head dejectedly. "F and P aren't even close together on my phone's keyboard. Not sure how that one happened."
Such errors are a frequent occurrence for Tezzo, whose mishaps are not limited to correspondence with possible love interests. Often an attempted "h" will become a "sh," rendering an offer to "hit up the ratty" vulgar and unappealing to friends.
Last weekend, the large-thumbed Lothario invited Tracy Liebman '12 to watch a movie in his dorm room. Tezzo accidentally typed "bovie," which his phone then corrected as "bovine." Liebman, a livestock enthusiast, happily accepted the offer, forcing Tezzo to scramble to find a cow he could bring back to his dorm room for the pair to stare at.
"Aside from the smell, it turned out to be a pretty good night," he said. "And we had fresh milk for breakfast!"
Indeed, Tezzo tries to remain positive about his outstanding digits in the face of chronic miscommunication. He hopes to become a film critic, where he can excel by giving especially emphatic thumbs-ups.
