Sticking it to the Man . . . Or, Something Like That

I am back after a long summer with no internet.

That's right. No internet people.

We don't have a home phone or T.V. and it turns out that when you don't "bundle" you end up paying a wholeheckalot for just the internet. At least I think $60/mo. is a lot. Or, at least I did think that.

So, around about June we canceled. I said, "Why are we paying for something we can get for free?" As in, there are free wi-fi hot spots everywhere.

I soon learned that I do not need the internet. However, I really, really want it.

As I said, we don't have T.V. It turns out the internet is a great source of entertainment. I missed it.

I also needed to look something up every time I turned around. For example, I would need a phone number and naturally I would want to turn to dexknows. Then, I would have to stop and think, "How did I look up phone numbers in my pre-internet life? (pause) Oh, yes, the phone book." But, wait, that hugemongous thing only covers the cities right next to me. What about Salt Lake phone numbers? What about out of state?

Or, what if I needed to look up the signs of a concussion? (don't ask) Or, find out for my four-year-old if spiders eat bees? What? Go to the Library and peruse the reference section?

Please.

I quickly learned that, not only is it highly inconvenient to leave your house to use the internet (in light of the dozens of times each day that I needed or sometimes really did need to look things up), but, I was also never going to be able to use a free wi-fi hot spot.

For example, I took the kids to McD's thinking they could play on the playland. There was a family (who I'm pretty sure had been there for at least 2 hours and I'm pretty sure were staying for at least 2 more) sitting by the only outlet so I only had about 30 minutes of battery power. Do you think my kids happily played while I hurridly crammed the twelve hours of internet time I desired into a precious 30 minutes? Of course not. Every 60 seconds it was either, "Mom look at me!" Or, a fight. Or, a question. Or, an owie. Or, an attempted escape.

Sometimes I could pull my laptop out for 5 minutes at the library. But, you can't send and receive e-mail at the library. So, then I would resort to walking to my dear neighbor lady's house five doors down to send and receive e-mails. I didn't want to bug her, so I would sit on her front porch (I could get the signal out there). But, really, that just felt weird.

At one time, I started missing it so much. But, I was still determined that $70/mo was just too much. We researched other options and didn't find anything suitable. So, I called Comcast and said, "I want the internet back, but your price is too high." They did not offer to cut their price just for me, just because I spoke up about how I felt. Sigh.

The only redeeming thing about taking the summer off from the internet was being able to avoid the incessant "Mom, can I have a computer turn?" questioning every single day from the time the kids woke up until they went to bed. We do have rules and they know the rules, but, they just love computer turns so much that they can't help themselves from asking. Just. In. Case.

At long last, near the end of August, we decided that internet is worth $70/mo. I mean, really it is. It's the world wide web for goodness sakes. It's every bit of information we could ever hope for right at our fingertips 24/7.

And, to soften the blow, we somehow got the 1/2-price deal for the first 6-months. I have to say, taking a summer off from the internet was a good little learning experience for all of us.

Thank heavens it's over.