When I first moved to my fair city of Spokane six weeks ago, I couldn’t get any internet, television or land line telephone. The guy from whom I bought the house had disconnected the cable and cut the wires. It was a major 30 day production getting hooked up. I might as well have been in Antarctica for a month. My only connection to the outside world was my cell phone with limited minutes. People would say, “Isn’t it freeing be to be disconnected? There’s only crap on tv anyway. The internet is just so much garbage, and how sweet it must be to not have a home phone.”
I hated it. I like the crap that is on tv, thank you very much. I can blow away hours on the internet researching very important stuff like real estate prices in Croatia. The best and worst thing was having this little cell phone and its 1,000 minutes per 30 days. I’d call somebody up and watch the minutes slide away like I was bleeding out. I really found out who I considered my friends to be. My cell phone would ring and I’d see who was calling. I had to ask myself, “Is this guy worth 10 minutes? Eight?” Being put on hold was the worst. “Thank you for holding. Your business is important to us.” No it isn’t. If my business was so important to somebody, they would hire someone to answer the damned telephone. Finally, at the end of my 30 days, I had exactly 3 minutes left on my account. I got 1,000 new minutes the next day and walked around like some guy who just hit the lotto. Money in the bank, baby. I got 1,000 minutes.
I found myself going to Starbucks and getting wired on caffeine at night. I became a regular, just so I could use their free wi-fi. Baristas started looking at me funny, like I was some kind of late night latte pervert, hanging out until I was kicked out at closing. An internet junkie looking for a fix, that was me.
Then, it was over. I’m connected to the world again. I can watch really stupid television programming any time I want. I can go online without having to waste my money on the overpriced pastries and coffee that Howard Schultz sells. I’m back in the world, and I’m loving it.
