The Most Expensive Letter

I’ve been pondering “k” a lot lately. Yes, this one.

This often-silent letter which, in the old days, had to be with other letters to mean anything: knock, kneel, knight; tack, rock, muck. One way for “k” to be good news was when it was used between other letters, “okay.”

Before the advent of cell phones, “k” was unlike all the other more popular letters in the English alphabet. “K” was in the same league as “q” and “x.” They had a very slim chance of being used, trailing way behind the vowels.

How times have changed. Today, “k” is king. It beats them all by a mile. It puts to shame even all the vowels combined, many times over. “K” has to be the most used—and abused—letter these days. You agree, don’t you?

"k."

Caught in traffic last week, I tried to keep myself occupied by poking my cell phone. I re-read all my incoming and sent messages. I was shocked to discover that 50% was “k”!

That got me computing frantically. If I received 50 messages per day and sent just as many, and if 50% was “k,” then that would be 50 "k’s," or the equivalent of P40! Multiply that by 30 days a month then 365 days a year! I, me, myself spend P16,200 on “k”?!

Now, how about the text messaging community? P85 million is spent on text messages every month. Quick, compute how much “k” is costing all of us! Collectively, we could build a church or a school, or fill a public library with books!

The money which people throw away for this miserable letter is not what’s sad really. It’s what happened to all the words “k” simply wiped away in one fell swoop. How could these words and phrases morph into one single "k"?!

Okay.

Noted.

Yes.

I get it.

Gotcha.

Of course.

Copy.

I read you.

You’re on.

All right.

I agree.

I think so.

Sure.

You said it.

Message received.

Your call.

All these explicit, exquisite words are now reduced to this once-insignificant single "k"?!

Test messaging has irrevocably altered our perception of words. And “k” symbolizes this change big time. We now brazenly misspell words for the sake of brevity. And we've said good-bye to punctuation marks and capitalization that make syntax elegant, not to mention correct.

"K" indeed has come a long way. It crept into our lives just when words have abruptly appeared with new, added meanings. Who would have thought that "windows" would now mean software other than that part of our homes where the wind comes through? “Virus” is no longer just what ails our physical bodies. “Scroll” has ceased to be the material upon which the original scriptures were written.

When I write, pondering words comes parallel with pondering life, and words are not what they used to be. Of course, language is a breathing, growing organism that changes and morphs with time. And so is life.

In this speedy electronic world, then, where messages are as quick to send as our fingers can fiddle with our cell phones, there is a new urgent need: intensive grace—to clearly see and understand the Word as it was written in the original scrolls.

For me, no matter how layered life has become, the solutions are always spelled out in God's Word. It does not change, neither should it be reduced for brevity or convenience; or given a new, added meaning to suit our changing lifestyles.