A Technology Black Out

Sometimes life without technology looks pretty good.

Last night while we were watching television, our cable froze. It was a riveting show too, a Simpson’s rerun. I went ahead and did all of the troubleshooting tasks, unplugged the box, etc… and still nothing happened. I went upstairs and asked my daughter if her cable was working. It wasn’t. I was going to have to call Charter.

When I picked up the phone, it was dead too and we had no Internet either. Gotta love the bundle. After getting a nice lady named Wanda, on the phone, I learned that we had an outage in the area and they were working on it. Quite frankly, I was kind of happy about it. I find troubleshooting cable and wi-fi to be a huge pain. I have to find where things are plugged in which often requires moving furniture. At least I knew it was on their end not mine.

When I thanked her for letting me know. She paused a minute and told me I had been her nicest customer all night. Really? What would have been the point of yelling at Wanda? She was sitting at a desk somewhere far away. What exactly could anyone expect her to do about an outage? It wasn’t like she could climb a pole and fix it. I answered the annoying survey that followed and gave her all A’s.

Then I hung up my cell phone and something fabulous happened. My son put down his iphone. My daughter came downstairs and plopped down in a chair and we talked.

For whatever reason, my teenagers began reminding each other of learning games they played on the computer as little kids. They remembered little pieces of songs and would sing them. Then they began telling different stories from their kindergarten days. They talked and laughed with each other. We all asked each other questions and we would laugh some more.

This went on for a little over an hour and then the cable came back on. My daughter was done with her trip down memory lane and headed up stairs to watch “Fresh Prince.” My son became engrossed in his laptop while watching yet another “Simpsons,” episode. That show is always on.

I picked my Kindle back up, but I was incredibly thankful for the technology black out. Wanda told me that I could call Charter and get credit for the time with no cable, but I really wanted to call them and thank them for the time. Their failure turned out to be a beautiful little gift for me.

I’m trying to do better at recognizing little blessings along the way and to give thanks for them. I’m trying to do better at treasuring the precious resource of time.

Life these days is loud and busy, so when we are forced to have some black out time, maybe we should seize the moment. It’s fairly rare and usually needed and quite possibly a gift. Maybe we should just say thanks.

Have an awesome day!

Wendy 🙂