Textual Healing: How Emojis Became the Official Language of Kiki Land

What are your favorite emojis?

Daily Prompt 1921

The texts absolutely fly here in the Land of Kiki. At any given moment, there are family texts for just the four of us, separate chats between me and the kids, groups with my mom and sister, and enough sidebar conversations to qualify as their own social network.

The messages are quick, chaotic, and usually hilarious. Some days I can barely keep up—especially with the extended family and cousin group texts, where responses come faster than I can find my reading glasses. Thankfully, we’ve added the younger cousins to the mix. They keep us current on all the latest emojis, abbreviations, and internet shorthand. Please note: I often need to quietly sidebar someone for translation services.

Apparently there are entire conversations happening in symbols now, and I’m just doing my best to remain bilingual.

Jules and I, however, have taken things to the next level. We now have our own private emoji language. We discovered you can turn photos into stickers, which means ordinary texting has evolved into a highly specialized communication system made up of facial expressions, inside jokes, and random snapshots used as punctuation.

You may recall that Jules and I saw Stevie Nicks last year. After every song, she’d grow very quiet. A hush would fall over the crowd… and then she’d offer one long, dramatic, deeply heartfelt: thaaaank you.

Naturally, this became part of our vocabulary.

So now, instead of typing “thanks” or even the efficient little “TY,” we simply send the Stevie sticker. No words necessary. Just mystery, gratitude, and a touch of chiffon.

Honestly, if every family had a custom emoji dialect, world peace might be possible. Or at the very least, fewer misunderstood texts.