Internet Withdrawal and Thought for the Day

The internet went out this weekend. I’ll give you a minute to catch your breath and clutch your AOL password like a life preserver.

According to the very polite tech who came out (bless his soul and his giant van full of wires), the satellite dish got all cranky thanks to “electrical interference” from recent storms. Nothing was even that close, but apparently a little static in the air is enough to send our internet connection into a full-blown existential crisis.

Now, I’m no Bill Gates, but I’m pretty sure something got zapped or frazzled or otherwise offended. If I had to explain it in my own words, I’d say: “The storm ticked off the internet gremlins and they pulled the plug.”

Needless to say, we suffered.

My grandson couldn’t get on AIM or play his online game (something about cartoon penguins running around an island?), and after two hours of no connectivity, I caught him just sitting and blinking, like an unplugged robot. It was unsettling. I haven’t seen him that still since naptime ended in preschool.

As for me, I spent the time wisely—cleaning, organizing, baking bread. JUST KIDDING. I sat on the porch muttering about “the good old days when we had encyclopedias,” and threatened to write a stern letter to the satellite company using a real pen.

When the internet finally came back on, I had 148 emails waiting. I almost passed out. Half of them were spam, a few were actual people, and one was from my sister-in-law who somehow managed to forward the same cat video to me five times. Technology is a gift.

But here’s something I did learn this week (no, not during the outage—I was too busy staring at a blank screen and questioning my life choices): At exactly five minutes and six seconds past 4 AM on July 8th, 2009, the time and date will read: 04:05:06 07/08/09

Now, that is cool. No, I didn’t figure it out myself. But I did double-check it on a real calendar and a digital watch, which is basically math at this point.

So if you’re up at that hour, take a moment to marvel. And then go back to bed. You’re not 20 anymore.

Moral of the story? The internet giveth, the storms taketh away, and teenage boys without Wi-Fi become eerily quiet. Also, never underestimate the power of a well-timed cat video.