Dear ChaCha:

My brother once, while intending to send his text to Twitter, accidentally sent it to ChaCha.

ChaCha (242242) is a text 411 service. For questions like "how many ounces are in a liter?" and "where is a coffee shop in Fort Collins?"

Matt sent: "I can't believe there's a study that links an increase in swearing with the state of the economy."

In 30 seconds, he had a response (which is when he knew he hadn't sent it to Twitter): "I haven't read the study, but I often swear at the economy."

ChaCha.

In last night's funk, I posed my own question: "Why is 30 such a terrifying age for a 29-year-old?"

Less than 30 seconds later: "You are now officially too old to be characterized in the press and in critical circles as a 'rising star' of the avant guard."

Misspelling aside, I laughed, despite the fact that I was crying by that point. Not quite the type of answer I was looking for, but it got me off my funk, even if only for a little while. I'm not sure that I ever was classified as a "rising star" of anything, avant-garde or not, and now I'm too old ...

Matt says I'm not too old. For anything. "There's a guy in my classes who's 42 who just got into medical school. And Jack's 35. You've got time to do anything you want."

I tried to feel better about it, but I still wound up with last night's post and last night's correspondence with an anonymous computer geek (bless him/her) burdened with my midnight crisis.

It's not "Dear Abby," but at least it writes back. And it writes back fast. And in addition to pulling you out of your emotional emergency, it can probably give you much more practical information, like what the circumference of Earth is; or who would win a Spiderman-Superman showdown; or whether there should be a comma between independent and dependent clauses.