Last week, I tried to post something on social media from my phone, and I thought I’d accidently typed a new emoji that I didn’t recognize. This would not be surprising. Emoji is not my first language. And social media is not my home world.

I deleted the tweet, because I didn’t want to send some kind of crude message without realizing it. A few hours later, people started complaining on social media because their phones where doing the same thing. Whew. Don’t you love it when you find out you aren’t the only one being socially awkward?

Evidently, some Apple iphones had developed a glitch. When users tried to type the letter “I”, the software replaced the letter with a box containing a question mark. It looked weird, in case you didn’t see one.

My solution was simple. I edited all my texts, messages, and posts. I’m a writer, after all. I can find different ways to say things and thereby avoid using the offending personal pronoun.

And this is where Apple did us all a big favor. In the four sentence paragraph above, three sentences start with the letter “I.” Every few minutes, every single day, this little glitch reminded me how many times I come first.

Facebook posts. Tweets. Instagram captions. Chats with my friends. And, probably, in all the real-life encounters, too. If “I” starts all my social media posts, she probably dominates most of my other thoughts, too.

This editing and revising has been good for my soul. It has forced me to rearrange my words and my thinking in ways that put other phrases and faces first.

That should be good for all of us, don’t you think?

So, thank you, Apple. I hope this is a permanent fix in me. Now, excuse me while I go download the software update that fixes this annoying glitch in my phone!!!!