Magic Thumbs! 13-Year-Old Wins Text-Messaging Championship

by Brian A Kennedy | April 23, 2007 at 09:23 am | 1645 views | 1 comment

"I just wasn't fast enough," said Nguyen, a 23-year-old engineer from
Pennsylvania. Asked how it felt to take second place, he was clearly
disappointed: "I just got beaten by a teenage girl, but you know."

Tirosh, who said she practiced with her friend and trainer Amy, who
threw out random words or symbols and even motivational Buddhist
quotes, admitted to feeling a certain pressure due to the home side
advantage.

Wearing a satin boxing robe before her championship bout against
Pozgar, she said success would come down to who could marry lightning
speed and accuracy.

"It's all about the thumbwork," she said. "It's about balance." She said she owed her success to relaxation and deep breathing.

So dedicated is she to the art of the text message that Tirosh
apparently unwittingly uses abbreviations such as BTW (by the way),
TTYL (talk to you later) and LOL (laughing out loud) in her normal
speech.

Pozgar said she trained by sending on average 8,000 text messages a
month to her friends -- an astonishing rate of one every five and a
half minutes. She pays 10 dollars a month for an unlimited text package
on her cell phone.

In a tense championship final, Tirosh seemed to have won after putting
down her phone first, only for judges to rule she had made a
15,000-dollar typo in the lyrics to Mary Poppins song
"Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious."

Pozgar, who says she wants to work in fashion when she's older, had no
hesitation about how to spend her prize money -- 10,000 dollars for the
east coast championship and a further 15,000 dollars for the national
award.

13-year-old Morgan Pozgar has dethroned 23-year-old Michael "Cheeser" Nguyen as the new Lord of Text, sending messages faster than 250 other contestants at NYC's WOrld Text Messaging Championships. U go grl!

"I just wasn't fast enough," said Nguyen, a 23-year-old engineer from Pennsylvania. Asked how it felt to take second place, he was clearly disappointed: "I just got beaten by a teenage girl, but you know."

Tirosh, who said she practiced with her friend and trainer Amy, who threw out random words or symbols and even motivational Buddhist quotes, admitted to feeling a certain pressure due to the home side advantage.

Wearing a satin boxing robe before her championship bout against Pozgar, she said success would come down to who could marry lightning speed and accuracy.

"It's all about the thumbwork," she said. "It's about balance." She said she owed her success to relaxation and deep breathing.

So dedicated is she to the art of the text message that Tirosh apparently unwittingly uses abbreviations such as BTW (by the way), TTYL (talk to you later) and LOL (laughing out loud) in her normal speech.

Pozgar said she trained by sending on average 8,000 text messages a month to her friends -- an astonishing rate of one every five and a half minutes. She pays 10 dollars a month for an unlimited text package on her cell phone.

In a tense championship final, Tirosh seemed to have won after putting down her phone first, only for judges to rule she had made a 15,000-dollar typo in the lyrics to Mary Poppins song "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious."

Pozgar, who says she wants to work in fashion when she's older, had no hesitation about how to spend her prize money -- 10,000 dollars for the east coast championship and a further 15,000 dollars for the national award.

She said she was going to hit the stores in New York City.