Nowadays with so many people working and taking classes online, the internet is a valuable commodity. The last couple of days a coworker of mine has been having issues with her internet. I have a mobile hotspot as a back-up if my home internet ever goes down. 

In 2001, I had two roommates. Two of us were gainfully employed, while the third roommate Mike was unemployed. Mike was my college roommate for all four years, and he decided to move from Ohio to Arizona and see what opportunities he could find in the desert.

We both applied to work at the first Apple retail store that was opening in Arizona. Neither of us got the job, and Mike never recovered from that rejection. He lost all his desire to get a job while I managed to secure work through a temp agency as a medical claims processor.

Somehow, Mike was still paying his share of the bills because he had accumulated a nice savings account. Even so, my resentment started to build when I would be up bright and early in the morning heading off to start work at 6 AM while he was still snoozing away. I often wondered what he did all day because we didn’t even have cable back then. He had a few basic channels on TV and his laptop (clamshell orange iBook) and the internet. 

One day I decided to play a trick on Mike. I figured out how to adjust the router to cut off the internet with a quick flip of a switch. I turned it off in the morning when I left for work. That afternoon when I arrived home, I slid open the patio door. We had those long white blinders that covered the door, and through these blinders, a disembodied voice shouted, “INTERNET’S DOWN!!” 

Of course, I had to pretend I didn’t know what was going on and get on my computer to prove that it was indeed down. I had to go without the internet for a bit as well so that it was not obvious that the internet coincidentally came back on when I got home. Some days I would leave the internet up, and other random days I would turn it off knowing Mike would be in for another boring day. One time I even pretended to call the internet company to complain, but they “kept me on hold and I’m not going to wait.” I don’t think he ever caught on to my shenanigans. He never got a job either. At some point, his savings ran out and gave me a week’s notice that he was moving out and driving across the country back home to Ohio. 

I lost touch with Mike, but I always remember this story anytime the INTERNET’S DOWN!!