#683 Unruly Text-jinks

I’m well aware many of my concerns are less than mainstream and that I devote an inordinate amount of virtual ink to trivial things.
But it could be worse.
After all, we apparently live in a society where they have to make a law to remind people not to “text” while they are driving. I mean really, has common sense entirely deserted Americans worshipping in the lap dance of technology?
Texting requires hands, fingers going to specific locations—small locations, I might add. Small motor skills do not synch well with large motoring skills.
And texting requires reading. Reading requires eyes. Coincidentally, driving requires eyes.
It really seems absurd that anyone would even try it. (Okay, I admit, I’ve tried it, but I didn’t send.) Is it just because it’s small? Would someone put a typewriter on their dashboard and tap away during morning rush hour?
This is the kind of hijink that gets people in trouble.
By the way, recently I asked if there is such a thing as one hijink. I was kidding. But I looked it up and you know what? There is.
Hijinks is not a madeup word at all, like zowie and boingo. It actually derives from the term jink and was originally the two words high jinks.
As opposed, I suppose, to low jinks. Or possibly just ordinary jinks.
Jink is a verb that first appeared in about 1715 and meant to wheel or fling about in dancing. High jinks was originally a drinking game. Jink was a dialect variation of “chink” meaning to gasp violently. “Chink” came from the Old English “cincung” which meant boisterous laughter. “Cincung” appears to contain many of the same letters as the phrase, “coughing a lung.”
“Jinks,” without the “high” attached to it, now means “rambunctious frolicsome play.” Although I have never, until now, heard of it without the high attached to it.
One dictionary lists as synonyms “horseplay” and “skylarking.” I love synonyms. But they never seem to make it easy to explain weird words to foreigners, do they?
“Hijinks? Oh that’s easy, they’re, you know, like horseplay or skylarking. Skylarking? That’s, um, like stupid, meaningless, non-commonsensical behavior.
You know, like drive-texting.”
America, ya gotta love it.