GBU

There's a scene in the old movie "The Odd Couple" which features the following bit of dialog: 

Oscar (to Felix): You leave me little notes on my pillow. I told you a hundred-and-sixty-eight times I can't stand little notes on my pillow! 'We are all out of Corn Flakes. -FU.' It took me three hours to figure out that FU was Felix Unger!

Honestly, I can't help but identify with Oscar, but I'm thinking here of the constant abbreviations that we see on Facebook and other social media, and even in emails. 'Richard - GBU'. Like Oscar, it took me some considerable time to figure out what GBU might mean. Was I being praised or cursed? Was this a friendly note, or some kind of sinister warning?

Well, I'm not quite so sharp as Oscar. As it turned out, I had to ask a friend what this means. 

"GBU? God bless you."

"Ah! Whew."

Another is 'GWS'. Sounds like it might be the make of a certain car, or perhaps a government agency; but no, it means Get Well Soon. (But then, did the writer really mean it, seeing that he seems to have felt that typing out the full words would take too much time?). 

Of course, there are many others. STFU, for instance. This has nothing to do with Felix Unger, despite the presence of his initials. 

I remember that my cousin, despite having spent an entire career in computer technology, once asked me what 'LOL' means. Clearly, we come from the same family. 

The problem is further compounded when one lives in a foreign country, as I do, for the abbreviations are likely to be indicating words in a foreign language, thus making it very unlikely that you will ever know what was meant.