My Guardian Angel Drinks

Whatever Heavenly being who’s in charge of watching over me has been hitting the sauce again. By the time you read this, the problem will have been solved; indeed, you can’t read this until this most recent problem has been solved, because I am cut off from the world as I write (with a pen on paper.) No Netflix. No land line. No Facebook. No way to check my bank balance. No way to find out what the temperature is or get the weather forecast. No Alexa. My modem is flashing a blue light to mock me. My internet connection is down until tomorrow. It went off yesterday. I’m not sure I will survive. If I don’t, I’ll have my husband post this for me posthumously. On my tomb stone will be the words: “She lost her will to live when she lost her internet connection.” People seeing it will gasp, will cry, and will understand.

How did this happen to me? I was born into a world of no computers smaller than large rooms. There was no World Wide Web. Long distance phone calls had to be important, because they cost money. We had three channels on the TV: NBC, CBS, and ABC. The news came on at 6:00 PM and 11:00 PM. There were no 24-hour news channels. There was no 24-hour TV; the stations went silent, after playing “The Star-Spangled Banner,” at 1 AM and didn’t come back on until 6 AM. There was a movie on at 1 PM, and you watched it or you didn’t; you didn’t get to choose. Our phones were dumb, attached to the wall, and the receiver was attached to the phone. I was thrilled when we got the six-foot cord — such freedom!