You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy!
Living in a DSL world in a dial up house.
DATELINE: Incommunicado USA
I’m at grandma’s house at the end of the road, across the rainbow, near the trees with the beautiful leaves.
The house is filled with love and the aroma of turkey. There are pictures of everyone as a child, when life was endless and the possibilities bigger than Uncle Ed’s laugh.
Missing in the clutter of antique rocking horses and upholstered furniture is technology that most of us take for granted.
I open my lap top and wait and wait and wait.
network available it says.
So I double click on the icon and see networks labeled CIA and Johnny Bad Ass. They’re locked.
Rats.
I pray that the internal hard drive of my computer will sniff the air for an internet signal that is available, roaming like free range chicken, answering to noone, available to all.
I wait and wait. But Nothing.
Eventually someone says, “How bout dial up?”
The concept is so foreign, so ancient, young people in the room are stupefied.
“Dial Up? What’s that a deodorant?”
For those of you under the age of 30, dial up is what Al Gore invented. You have to go out to the garage, pull out the jumper cables and hook your lap top up to the SUV. You have to stand on one leg and hope the clouds don’t block the sun.
Dial up comes with a band aid and a smile.
So I hit connect and start waiting.
I watch a green line begin to crawl across the bottom of my screen. Its about as fast as an earth worm crawling through super glue.
I have all the connectivity of a game twister between Palestinians and Israelis in the Gaza Strip.
While I wait for the magic ether of the internet to spiral into my computer, I think about how much we take technology for granted. We have our blackberries and iphones and pda’s and laptops. We walk with our heads down while we text to our friends while we walk through an onslaught of invisible data transfer in airports and downtown cafeterias. We skype and facebook and tweet and IM.
But I have none of these options. I am in a time warp of technological deficiency. It’s as if I am fighting in a World War II foxhole with a magic marker and number two pencil.
So as you give thanks on this greatest of American Holidays, be thankful for things big and small.
Give thanks for family and a turkey in the oven. If your loved ones are healthy be grateful. If the TSA guy didn’t linger on your junk, give thanks.
And certainly be thankful for the instantaneous click of a button that takes me to the vast reaches of the universe and back.
If you are reading this today, and you didn’t hear a telephone line connecting to a woodchuck in Vermont, then be thankful.
I am trapped in an Al Gore Cyber-Verse where molasses and cat litter substitute for informational data exchange.
Happy Thanksgiving everyone.
and that is crazy.