My brother sent me this text recently: “Please call ASAP.” This is the kind of message you only send someone when you have urgent, and probably bad, news. It is not the kind of message you send someone when you need the name of the place we went to that one time that had those extra dark and salty pretzels.

On the call, I pointed out, in what I promise was a helpful and restrained tone of voice, that when you send someone a terse, urgent text like that, his or her mind instantly reels with disaster scenarios and prepares for the worst. The next time you have a question about pretzels, I told him, maybe lead with that instead of implying that something terrible has happened to one of the loved ones we have in common.