Internet Dependence Day

The other night my sons spent the night in a tent in the backyard for the first time. We’ve been looking to take a big family camping trip at the end of the summer but the boys had never slept outside before so it was a good idea to have a trial run.

They weren’t completely unplugged since they ran an extension cord from the house to the tent to plug in a lamp and radio. Otherwise they were roughing it though. Dinner was hot dogs, s’mores and burnt popcorn cooked over the campfire and instead of playing Xbox or Minecraft they competed at cards and dominoes. Rather than a bed time movie they told stories that weren’t too scary and made shadow puppets on the side of the tent. Ah the simple life.

I stayed inside and tried to get some work done but when the internet went out around midnight I decided to crawl into bed instead of calling the technician. When I woke up the next morning my fiancé was sitting in my office with a look of dread. After assuring me that the kids were ok he told me he was upset because the internet was out.

This time I called the company and a prerecorded message told me everyone with this service in the state of North Carolina would be offline until 10am. No biggie, just a few hours internet free. Surely we could survive that; after all the boys weren’t even awake and inside yet so there was no need to panic.

When 10 am came and went ant the internet still wasn’t back up and running, that’s when we started to panic. I called the company back and they ran all the tests they could and told me there was something wrong with my line. Since I’d called so late, as in after 10am, and the next day was a holiday it was going to be at least 3 days before someone would be able to come out and look at it.

Cue freak out! I work from home on the internet, I had to send in an invoice that morning so I could get a pay check on time, I didn’t have room in my schedule for any down time. Not to mention its summer time and my kids love Netflix and World of Warcraft to beat the heat.

It was right about that time when they came in from the tent and figured out that what they had planned to do all day wasn’t going to be happening. We were all going to have to rough it just a little bit longer but that was ok. After all they’d had so much fun camping the night before, right? Wrong.

This was just shy of the equivalent of the end of the world and I must admit my fiancé and I got in on the childish dramatics. Who would have thought that 25 years ago I managed to make it through the whole summer without an internet connection and still survive?

The next morning we were still lamenting the situation and wondering how we would even figure out what time Fourth of July fireworks would be going off. So wrapped up in the sorrow of our isolation we didn’t even notice the internet truck pull up into the driveway. Despite the fact that it was a holiday he had it up back up and running in no time with a connection even better than before.

Back on line the family could breathe again but we learned a valuable lesson; we’d better pick a campground with wi-fi.

Have you ever had an out-of-internet experience?