You’ve probably heard about the new law that makes it illegal to text and drive. Why they left out shaving, brushing your teeth, putting on makeup, reading the newspaper (You’re not reading this while you drive, are you?) and other extracurricular activities, I can’t say.

It seems that texting is the focus because it has only recently joined the list of so many things that distract a driver. It is to distractions as the H1N1 is to other types of flu. The severity comes with pre-existing conditions. A condition that would exacerbate the flu is something like chronic sinus infections or asthsma. A condition that would exacerbate driving distractions is possessing the doofus gene.

You and I act like a doofus now and then – yes you do, don’t deny it – but there are real honest to goodness doofuses (doofi?) out there. I have heard this no-texting law might be difficult to enforce. How is a police officer going to know that a driver was on the Internet or receiving or sending a text message? Driver gets the blue lights, driver taps the End button, officer approaches the car, there’s no proof that driver wasn’t just making a call. And if you’re above 18, there’s no law against that.

I’m in no way condoning that people go ahead and text while driving. In fact, although I’ve done it before, I fully recognize that it’s just as dangerous and sometimes moreso than some of those other activities I mentioned above. So what’s the work around?

I was thinking about a computer program that my husband has used that lets you type by talking into a microphone. I’m sure there’s software like that for the cell phone, but I’m betting it’s about to proliferate. This is not just a statewide law, but it’s an issue that’s garnering federal attention. President Obama signed into law this week that no federal employee is to be texting and driving on federal time. There is also support mounting in Congress for requiring states to ban texting or emailing while driving, or face a 25 percent cut of their annual federal highway funding.

While support for cutting out texting and driving is increasing, so is the popularity of social networks. I know that all you do is get on MySaline.com, the social network for Saline County, but believe it or not, there are other networks out there that are much larger. There’s one called Facebook that’s huge, and this thing called Twitter that’s the Henny Youngman of the Internet – that means all one-liners, kids.

People want to keep up with what’s going on by checking in on their favorite social networks, and we’ve gotten ourselves used to multi-tasking in this computer age, so what’s a person to do when you just need to sit in a car and drive?

It’s still okay to turn on the radio. It’s still okay to sing along with the radio (some of you need to keep the window rolled up). It’s not illegal – yet – for people over 18 to talk on the phone while you’re driving. And yet, you just need to know what somebody’s Facebook status is! You need to know if you got any replies to your Twitter question! You simply have to find out what weirdo suggested what other weirdo as a mayor candidate on MySaline’s survey! It's! So! Compelling!

I was talking to my son about this dilemma of the gap between the want-to and the can’t. I told him about the software, Dragon Naturally Speaking, which does the talk-to-text translation. It does well for my husband, since he doesn't have an L.A. accent like I do (lower Arkansas). My family is from Nashville, Arkansas, and my drawl follows the branches on the family tree. Thusly, the software can make up some pretty crazy sentences based on my input.

My son reminded me of some wisdom he had discovered, while performing some trial and error with Goog-411, the phone directory provided by Google. It lets you talk into the phone instead of dialing. One day, I noticed my son was yelling at the top of his hair while alone in his room. I marched up the stairs and opened the door to see just what in the wide world of sports was going on. He explained that the louder he yelled, the better Goog-411 understood him. Progress!

This column was printed in The Benton Courier on Sunday, October 4th, 2009. See more of Shelli's columns here.