One New York City Saturday this summer, my phone was graced with a text from Sam around 2 a.m.

“hrey babe, wut u doing?”

In most cases, I wouldn’t bother responding to this kind of crap. If a dude is too lazy to properly type his words or too stupid to figure out how to handle his T9 feature, he’s not going to be any less lazy or stupid in bed. Plus, it’s obvious that the sender of this text was attempting the bullshit move of the century: the mass booty-call message.

You know what I’m talking about. He types a question into his phone, selects 10 or 12 recipients, deploys the multiple text messages with a single keystroke and waits for the responses to roll in like sweepstakes entries. From the pool of interested candidates, he has the freedom to choose the lucky recipient of his ween.

Memo to mass-text dispatchers: we know when we’re not the only recipient. In fact, I’m sure a woman invented this move, realized what a bitchface strategy it was and therefore passed it onto men without leaving them any detailed instructions. Here, start with this: a little personalization goes a long way — if you have to mass-text, at least try to hide it. Put her name in the message, say something cute or, I don’t know … CALL HER. Hell, even the fine folks who send me spam penis-enlargement e-mails go through the trouble of getting my name on them. If your excuse for negligent text etiquette is lethargy or intoxication, perhaps you should stop those hot little fingers from pressing the send button and ask yourself this: are you even motivated or sober enough to bang right now?

Like I said, I would have normally ignored the suspicious text, but I replied right away and arranged a rendezvous. See, tonight was a special case. The dude had some notable standout qualities — Sam was older, oddly sexy and bought me expensive dinners — but that wasn’t all.

It was this: Sam bragged about his enormous penis to me. A lot. Like, on dates and stuff. The huge penis would come up on the way to the restaurant, the wide penis was mentioned when we were selecting a wine, the long penis casually slipped into dessert conversation. Even though the mass-text move took me by surprise (he was truly outdouching himself tonight), you can’t blame me for responding favorably. If someone gave you the chance to meet a penis surrounded by such fanfare and folklore, you’d jump at the opportunity.

I hopped in a cab and headed to Sam’s where we got down to business pretty quickly. At last, the moment arrived: I finally came face-to-face with his wrinklebeast and, as I expected to be, I was floored.

It was petite.

What the hell?

Why would he brag so confidently and constantly when he clearly could not deliver the goods? It’s not like the peen was average-sized or simply smaller than what I’d expected. It was certifiably small. Short and thin, somewhere in between golf pencil and half a carrot.

The only logical explanation for the immensely overhyped penis is that the poor guy must have fallen in love with a deceptive lighting situation somewhere. His room must be lit in such a magical way that he looks in the mirror and sees his peen looking five times longer and wider than it actually is. I can totally relate. Since my apartment came equipped with this awesome track lighting and dimmers, I’ve fallen into the mighty dangerous habit of manipulating the brightness in my bedroom to make my hair and face appear flawless and model-fabulous no matter what color crap I happen to smear on myself. The forgiving light tells me so many pretty lies that there are days when I walk out the door looking like a beast decorated with CoverGirl war paint. Lighting can screw with you big time.

Anyway, look, I’m not a bitchbag and the size of the penile assets don’t usually concern me. In fact, some of the best sex I’ve had was with my sophomore year boyfriend — and his pipe was vastly unimpressive (if not teensy). I can’t speak for other women (or men!), but for me, it’s really not the size of the boat that’s going to get me off, so don’t stress about it or run out and get a peeno-plasty.

But hey, small penis? Meet humility. A big penis doesn’t give you any excuse to be arrogant either, but talking about how you have an ankle spanker when you don’t measure up is like promising me Dom Perignon and handing me a Dixie cup full of your piss. It’s false representation and it’s heartbreakingly disappointing. Why even talk about your penis size unsolicited?

So, insecure now? Take comfort in some facts. The famous mid-1940’s study from the Alfred C. Kinsey Institute for Sex Research concluded that the average erect penis length is 6.2 to 6.4 inches. Keep in mind the way the study was conducted: Kinsey researchers sent men stamped postcards, instructed each recipient to hold the postcard against his own erect penis, mark the length of his wang and mail back the results. In 2005, Lifestyles Condom Co. released the results of its own more extensive and (hopefully more accurate) study: they found the average length of an erect penis to be only 5.877 inches with most men falling in the 5.1 to 6.2 inch range. This time, measurements were taken by nurses from the point where the penis meets the body (at the pubic bone). The study also found that the average erect penis had a girth of 4.972 inches, with three quarters of dudes measuring between 4.5 and 5.5 inches around.

So, I opted not to sleep with Sam, but decided to fool around a little bit and figured I was obligated to crash in his bed for the night. But I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t get over the penis disappointment and I grew more and more angry about the mass-text message. Who did he think he was?

I stared at the clock and watched the minutes pass, making a point to shift around violently every time Sam started snoring (that works, P.S.). The moment the first glimmer of sunlight spilled into the bedroom, I climbed over him, got dressed, kissed him goodbye and embarked on a 26 block walk of shame in a tube top and heels.

It was the walk of shame that changed my life. I vowed never, ever, to respond to one of those mass-texts again because they’re crap and I’m better than that. I promised myself that I wouldn’t have such high physical expectations for guys, swore I would never spend the night at a dude’s apartment unless I got some satisfaction out of the deal and, most importantly, I would never, ever get involved with the kind of guy who talks about his penis on a date. You shouldn’t either.

Jenna B. is a senior. She can be contacted at opinion@cornellsun.com. Bedroom Eyes appears alternate Thursdays.