On my doorstep the other day, on the front page of my favorite Minneapolis daily newspaper, was a story about a spreading high tech menace called “sleep texting.”

It told of thousands of people, mostly young folks of high school and college age, unwittingly expanding their adventures in the miracles of hand held devices by subconsciously writing text messages while they’re still half asleep.

It pictured scenes in untold numbers bedrooms and dormitories where the open cell phone lies on a bed table within easy reach as a wake-up alarm. Something from the cell—maybe a sound or some flickering light– stirs the sleeper. Like Pavlov’s trained dog responding to a familiar stimulus, the slumberer reaches for the cell phone and starts texting. Texting what?

It doesn’t have to be coherent texting, with things like, you know, subjects and predicates. Roused from sleep the texter starts typing in a fog. Anything that comes to mind. How would I know? I can’t text on my cell phone when fully awake.

As a man who labored for this newspaper, the Star Tribune, for nearly 40 years, I have no reason to doubt this story. The explanation is that chronic use of the mobile phone, in all of its derivatives—the high tech pads and pods of the world—have now become so glued into our lives that we are beginning to respond to their summons by instinct. It doesn’t matter what our state of mind is when the bell rings. It’s OUR ring. Time to act. The sound doesn’t matter. It could by the first thee bars of Mozart’s clarinet concerto or a squealing pig. It’s ours. So act! Are we driving a car? All of the sensible traffic control experts on the continent tell us DON’T use the cell while driving.

You wouldn’t want to bet your dwindling bank account on how well that advice is doing. So OK, the experts are probably right and have all the documentation on the hazards when we act like robots. And the latest breakthrough in high tech communication is writing text messages in your sleep. The only response I have there is how on earth can you find the backspace key in the dark when the keyboard is two inches wide, you can’t see it, you’re fighting cobwebs and you really don’t know who sent the message.

I’m told these things are slam-dunks for the young people of today. This may be right and I’m the first to admit not being enthralled by the miracles of Facebook and Twitter. I also admit having been dragged screaming into it. I’ve been persuaded that it’s not a generational roadblock; that millions of retirees are having a ball on Facebook, people eligible for Social Security, AARP and 10 per cent off on Viagra at some outlets. That if you want to start a revolution, Facebook is the place to recruit foot soldiers. All of this may be true. I admit having tried to launch myself into Facebook. I lost track of my password and petitioned for a new one. I began getting a scrambled alphabet and being asked to identify the numbers sent in the test. Most of the numbers looked upside down. One of them came with what looked like the face of a gorilla and turned out to be the figure 9 that had experienced a first life in a pretzel factory. Somebody said I needed a photo. I couldn’t figure out how to install it. But one of the friends stepped in to provide a photo taken years before on a bike ride, showing one of the old timers and me wearing helmets that basically obscured our faces and could have been used initially in an underground coal mine. I finally registered because I was starting to get notes from people totally unknown to me, living in such far afield cities as Manila and the Kyber Pass. But as far as I know we never crossed paths so I really don’t know what to do or say when I’m asked to go to the wall.

There was one promising exchange a year ago when I got a message on Facebook from Ljubljana in the little Balkan country of Slovenia, from where my grandparents emigrated to northern Minnesota in the late 1880s. The message came on Facebook from a young man named Blaz, his first name, and with the same surname as mine.

Blaz is fan of American pro football. He’d been surfing the internet for material on the Minnesota Vikings, whose games he was somehow able to watch on television in Ljubljana beneath the southern Alps, not far from Switzerland and Austria. Nothing is beyond the restless reach of the National Football League. Through search engines geared to information on the Vikings he found my name as the author of several books on pro football.

Correspondence followed immediately. Blaz Klobuchar turned out to be a forestry student studying at the university in Ljubljana. Through Facebook he made contact. This was sometime in 2010. The Vikings were losing routinely.

“Why don’t the Vikings move out of the 3-4 defense into something that gives them a better balance against either the run or pass?” was Blaz’ first question.

This from a forestry student in Slovenia!

“Where,” I asked, on the Facebook Wall, “are you getting all of this?”

Blaz turned out to be the only living expert on pro football in the entirety of Europe, including a small pocket of NFL fans in Trondheim, Norway, who for years having been trying to entice the Vikings to play an NFL game somewhere near the Holmenkollen ski slide outside of Oslo. When you come to think of it, that scheme could have some merit and sooner or later might get some serious attention from the Vikings. They’ve tried everything else.

The moral in this is that once the internet arrived– followed by cell phones, I Pods, electronic tablets, Facebook, Twitter and texting while you’re sleepwalking– the line between reality on hand and the need for daily therapeutic counseling has disappeared. I’m going to ask Blaz in Slovenia if the Vikings need another quarterback.

About Jim Klobuchar:

In 45 years of daily journalism, Jim Klobuchar’s coverage ranged from presidential campaigns to a trash collector’s ball. He has written from the floor of a tent in the middle of Alaska, from helicopters, from the Alps and from the edge of a sand trap. He was invited to lunch by royalty and to a fist fight by the late Minnesota Viking football coach, Norm Van Brocklin. He wrote a popular column for the Minneapolis Star Tribune for 30 years and has authored 23 books. Retiring as a columnist in 1996, he contributes to Ecumen’s “Changing Aging” blog, MinnPost.com and the Christian Science Monitor. He also leads trips around the world and an annual bike trip across Northern Minnesota. He’s climbed the Matterhorn in the Alps 8 times and has ridden his bike around Lake Superior. He’s also the proud father of two daughters, including Minnesota’s senior U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar.