My wife and I recently paid to see a Michael Jackson impersonator at Rhythm & Brews.

I know what you’re thinking: Hee, hee, hee!

Well, beat it.

I hadn’t been to a club for official, late-night entertainment since about the year 1 B.C. — Before Children. We arrived early and waited about an hour for the “gloved one” to arrive.

As the crowd filtered in, I noticed something new (to me), and a bit odd. Clusters of young customers — friends? — were sitting together, but they weren’t socializing.

There was almost no talk or laughter. Instead, many of the young customers were staring into their cell phones. Their faces were illuminated in a pale glow of LCD light.

“What are they doing?” I whispered to my wife.

“They’re texting,” she said.

“Why are they texting in a nightclub?” I said.

“Because that’s what they do,” she said.

Just then her cell phone rang, and it was our 20-something baby sitter sending my wife a text message. She was alerting us that our two boys were in bed.

My wife wiggled her thumbs and sent her a swift reply.

“Show me how to do that,” I said.

Patiently, my wife took my flip phone and began to instruct me in the basics of text messaging. She showed me how to scroll to the proper function and then how to type on the tiny keypad with my thumbs — which I found approximately as easy as picking up BBs with chopsticks.

I smiled politely but quickly zoned out. “This is something that I do not need to know,” I decided. When you hit 50, you have to conserve space in your brain.

The depth of the texting phenomenon had not really hit me until last week when I talked to a representative of Cricket Communications. A mobile-phone company representative sent me the results of a survey by Kelton Research that reports that American teenagers send an average of 455 text messages a month and receive 467.

Whoa.

I found it flabbergasting that kids text an average of about 15 times a day, but my friends with teenagers tell me this survey is undoubtedly accurate. About half the teenagers in a recent Harris Interactive survey said that text messaging is their primary way of communicating.

Interestingly, parents tell me that teenage boys are big on text-messaging. This surprised me until I discovered that kids today communicate in short, alphanumeric bursts, the digital equivalent of grunts and eye rolls.

My favorite bit of text shorthand is POS, which, I’m told, stands for “parent over shoulder.” I think this is the real reason for the surge in teen texting, personal privacy. Phone calls can be overheard, e-mails can be read by prying eyes and Web surfing can be monitored. But text messaging is clandestine and, consequently, cool.

I still think it’s a silly trend that will eventually run its course.

Don’t believe me?

Remember CB radio? Ten-four, good buddy.