April Fools’ Day

I woke up this morning, and my phone looked like this:

Notice what it says up there in the left hand corner? Yeah.

That’s never happened to me in my own home before. I called downstairs to my husband and he told me that his phone was the same.

G: “How am I supposed to call AT&T to find out what’s happening since we no longer have a land line?”

Me: “I think there’s some code you can punch in that goes directly to your carrier, even if you have no service.”, I said uncertainly, “Just Google it.”

G: “But we have no service. How am I supposed to Google it?”

Me: “Use the Wifi.” I was getting annoyed. He is a tech guy, after all.

G: “Yeah. The Wifi isn’t working.”

I checked my phone and he was right. The Wifi signal looks strong, but I can’t get to any websites, FB or Pinterest through the apps or through a browser.

G: Annoyed. “What the hell is going on?” 

He checked the router, rebooted it, and even though we can see it and connect, we got nothing.

That’s when the little alarm in the back of my mind started buzzing. Our internet service has nothing to do with our cell phone carrier service. Absolutely nothing. Yet here we are, utterly “disconnected” from the rest of the world.

I mentally note that it’s April 1st , and the writer in me is acutely aware of the irony here.

After all, I have a novel that starts out like this which is sitting in a file in this very laptop right this minute. Only in that story, there’s also no electricity or technology of any kind available.

I feel a little better in that we do have power. And our cars still run. So clearly it’s not the end of the world, right?

My husband has gone off to the office to see if he can get to the bottom of this. So, I wait.

My imagination runs off completely untethered. What could it be? Is everyone else going through this? Are we all disconnected for a while, or a day, or (gasp) forever??? The ramifications of that potential are interesting to ponder. The irony is that we can’t even go to the web to find out.

I am acutely aware at this moment just how dependent I am on technology.

When my husband returns, he looks a little bewildered and slightly annoyed.

“So?”, I ask.

“Well…turns out AT&T has an outage throughout the whole area. And in a bizarre coincidence, Verizon (our internet service provider) just got taken over by some company called Frontier and they are changing everything over today.”

What are the chances that we’d have two entirely separate service providers that are down at the same time? Turns out that it’s pretty good.

Apparently Frontier knew about this in advance and stated that this changeover would not cause any interruption of service of any kind whatsoever.

April Fools’ Day indeed.

So, for at least a little while I am living life “old school”. After all, I am older than cell phones AND the Internet. This is what life was like before those came along.

Only back then, it was normal and it didn’t bother me that I couldn’t reach my daughter, or son, or husband, or whomever at a moment’s notice. It bothers me a little now. I’m having to reassure myself that it’s all good. These are the bits about technology that I tend to take for granted in my day-to-day. Now that they’re gone (however briefly), I’m missing all that convenience.

We’re traveling to Georgia today, so hopefully we get our cell service back at some point along the way. I can’t imagine traveling without the backup sense of security that a cell phone provides. Talk about dependent on technology. Sheesh.

We have downloaded two audio books to listen to on the road. And I can write on my laptop at least. That excites me. Either way, I’m all prepared for an adventure!

So, Happy April Fools’ Day today. Remember to be kind in all your foolishness, and have an awesome day!

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