By Heather Bowser
Benjamin Cook?s thumbs danced across the plastic keys, ?988999887.?
David Stoddard, his friend, glanced at the screen, smiled and replied, ?6666684444466.?
?2226666444664?? Ben asked.
?999887,? Dave answered.
Speedy text messages with friends helped Orem teenager Ben Cook set a Guinness World record for the fastest text messager on Earth.
During a text messaging contest last week, Cook typed a 160-character paragraph on his cell phone over 10 seconds faster than the current record holder.
Cook typed, ?The razor-toothed piranhas of the genera Serrasalmus and Pygocentrus are the most ferocious freshwater fish in the world. In reality they seldom attack a human? in 57.75 seconds.
Cook, who received his cell phone last year for Christmas, practiced the sentence for about a month with his friend Dave Stoddard ? who placed second by less than 2 seconds.
To qualify for the contest, the 17-year-olds had to type the Guinness-approved paragraph the fastest, with no extra spaces and no spelling errors. They could use their own wireless phones, but the ?predictive text? and other timesaving features on the cell phone were disabled.
?The actual contest was pretty nerve racking with the judges hovering and cameras everywhere,? Cook said.
Although the boys were nervous, both their times were faster than world-record holder James Trusler of Britain, who set the record last year in Sydney, Australia.
Stoddard received a text advertisement about the contest from his wireless phone service provider, Cricket. He then invited Cook to enter the contest with him.
?My mom thought the whole thing was worthless until she found out how fast I was,? Stoddard said and smiled.
The boys, both juniors at Timpanogos High, send between 30 and 100 text messages per day?mostly to each other.
?We can just go on forever,? Cook said.
Cook and Stoddard said they spend more time sending text messages on their phones than talking on it.
?There are benefits to sending text messages,? Cook said. ?You have more time to think about what you are going to say.?
Cook?s longest text conversation was nearly three hours ? Stoddard?s was just over two hours.
Both boys said they are trying to cut back, but still send text messages during class.
?I had a talk with my parents last night about not doing that,? Stoddard said.