Tomorrow is the beginning of another week. I’m not sure when I stopped recognizing Sunday as the beginning of the week and started dreading Monday instead. I remember when I was younger, I didn’t like Sundays because I had to go to sleep early, or else I wouldn’t be conscious for AA (or Hawk Time, as Chaska later changed it to, realizing very few 6-8th graders were actually alcoholics).
I remember Sundays were notoriously bad for television, because after the new episode of the Simpsons at 7 o’clock, precious little was on. I went a couple weeks where I watched Xena: Warrior Princes and Hercules back-to-back, curious as to how friggin’ awesome their offspring would be. This occupied my 9 and 10 o’clock hours, plopped in front of my mom’s television, trying desperately to avoid my father/hoping he had fallen asleep, and waiting for my mother to get home from work. However, most weekend evenings, I would either throw in tapes of old Star Trek episodes my mom had recorded ten years prior, or I would risk venturing downstairs to sign on to the INTERNET.
Yes, I am eternally grateful to Al Gore for the information superhighway, because as the legends tell, he held the 97th Congress hostage with a cap gun and a broken beer bottle until they agreed to invent the Internet. Thank God.
I would creep down the stairs, one by one, testing each one first to make sure it didn’t squeak before applying my full weight. I always skipped the second stair down because it always squeaked. That fucker. When I got to the fifth or sixth stair, I would peer around the wall to see if my father was asleep. The deafening, guttural snore that resonated from his diaphragm was generally a good indication that he was unconscious. He was the gate-keeper of the Internet, the Cerberus that guarded the series of tubes. My Tae Kwon Do training had helped me achieve ninja-like stealth while climbing down the stairs, essential to the success of the mission.
I finally reached the landing, and that’s when the hard part began. Darting across the dining room to the computer cabinet, my eyes and ears were fixed on my dad, aware of any change in his behavior that might indicate consciousness. My heart rate skyrocketed as he groaned and shifted in his sleep.
“You can do this,” I whispered to myself.
Sitting down at the computer chair, I launched America Online. Here’s where things got really tricky. You may remember dial-up Internet, which was not only sluggish, but also took up the phone line. Who the hell thought that was a good idea? On evenings when I was mad at my sister, my 7th grade self would pick up the phone and listen for three things:
1. The “hissssssss” as my picking up the phone disconnected the Internet connection.
2. The “goodbye!” from the America Online Man, who was apparently all too eager to see her leave.
3. The “GOD DAMMIT!” from my sister, as her chats (and sometimes college applications) were interrupted.
Yes, it was an altogether shitty system, one I was at the mercy of for far too many years. You remember that awful hissing sound mentioned above? Well, that was the final step in a noisy signing on process:
1. First came the dial tone. The soft, soothing pitch that told you Internet access was mere seconds away.
2. Next was the dialing of the numbers. There were specialized Internet numbers that were automatically dialed by the modem in an effort to connect to the Internet routing station. Or whatever. This part wasn’t especially loud, but I still shoved my hand over where I thought the speaker was.
3. Now, here is where we heard the horrifying sounds that could have easily been part of a low-budget 60s alien movie. The crackles, the high pitched whines, the varying frequencies, all played at a blistering fortissimo. Approximately 46% of the time, this was enough to wake my dad up. Most of the time, I was watching him like a hawk, so as soon as I saw him groggily open his eyes, I shut off the modem and bolted back upstairs. However, I was occasionally overconfident and subsequently captured. After a 10 minute lecture about how I shouldn’t use the Internet without permission, I was forced to share such sensitive information as, “how my classes were going,” and, “if I liked any girls.” Gross.
4. However, there was that 54% that more often than not prevailed, and I was greeted by the trustworthy, white-sounding voice of the AOL Man who welcomed me and told me I had mail. Looking back on it, I would have preferred to have heard Morgan Freeman welcome me and tell me about exactly how many people were trying to sell me male enhancement products, but I’m sure he was busy shooting Deep Impact or something.
To be honest, I’m not even sure what I did on the Internet before the invention of Facebook, MySpace, Reddit, or any other time suckers. I didn’t get a Xanga until 2003, so I couldn’t have been writing my clever little shit for all the world to see before that. And the Internet wasn’t fast enough for me to stream video, or even download songs. No YouTube, no Wikipedia, no Google. What a different world.
So… yeah. Somehow that relates to me now recognizing Monday as the beginning of the week. Cool.
