What? No Internet? : sarahalice (Estefania)

Runner-up, February 2010 Writing Contest

I really don’t want to get up. I mean, it’s Saturday which means no school. I don’t want to get up. Guess I’ll just sleep in for a while more.
“Get up Syndra!” geez banging on my door already. “We’re waiting on you, breakfast is ready!”
“Oh shut up Kyle, I want to sleep more!” I rolled over in bed trying to ignore him.
“Now!” he just wouldn’t give up would he. I got up grumpily from bed, unlocked my bed and went downstairs to the dining table to eat.
They were sitting down already beginning to eat. “Oh gee thanks. Wake me up when you already started without me,” I said dully. “Yumm, pancakes.”
“We called more than ten minutes ago. You just wont get up when we tell you so we had to send Kyle up to get you,” sighed mom as she served my pancakes.
I ate in silence as did everyone and thought about what I should do now that I was up. Might as well check my messages on facebook and things like that, I thought. At the thought of that I hurried off as soon as I finished eating to my room. Good thing I had my own computer. I turned it on and waited for it impatiently to turn on. As soon as it was on and running I clicked on the icon for my internet browser where my homepage didn’t turn up. I looked to see if the signal had to be repaired and it didn’t, so I refreshed the page. Nothing. Okay, I thought. Let’s try going to other pages. Nothing! What the heck! I want to talk to my friends and read manga and watch anime, this soooo can’t be happening.
I ran down the hall and took a very sharp turn to head downstairs at the same time as I tried texting my friends or to see if I had any messages. Nothing. Something was really messed up. I nearly fell down the stairs for not paying attention when I realized that my parents and my brother were all gathered around the radio. Just was I was going to tell them that something was wrong with my computer and my phone, I heard it. News that would change the world for ages. At least for me it would seem so.
“News have reached us that last night there was a major malfunction in all the databases that run the internet and such; decimating that it will take at the most a year to get back up and running. There is no reason for why this happened, but it seems we will all have to change our life styles for while and-” the broadcaster went on but I could take it.
“NOOOO! This cannot be happening!” everyone jumped finally realizing that I was there with them. My morning has taken a completely wrong turn.

It’s been a month since the internet went down. The whole world has had to adapt to a new way of living. For me, I thought I would almost go insane from not being able to get on, but I have been coping I guess. In some ways school has had to go back to research for projects out of books, and well, it’s not particularly fun, but if you think about, sight isn’t so badly injured anymore. In some ways, I get to read more books peacefully and I don’t have to listen to my brother constantly yelling at the T.V. when he played video games. Don’t get me wrong, he can still play, but not online anymore. And anyways, companies that make game systems and games are working to make games for just singles players or split screen. When my brother realized what it meant to have no internet for games was priceless. We also play outside more with our neighbors which is nice.
You can say that it was fortunate not having lost communications completely. I get to talk to my friends more over the phone, and some of us have even been sending letters to each other via mail. Some are letters that one gets, writes and sends it off to another person and so on. Having to internet still sucks, but I get to hang with my friends more and I hate to admit, done better in school. My friends somewhat agree, but they can’t wait for the internet comes back up, and we’re all struggling. In my opinion, I like it better this way. My imagination runs wild more and it’s much easier to write. Coming up with games is so much easier and we have learned to keep busy.

Life without internet has been harder for many more than I thought. We’re in the half way point, and internet returning seems to still be far off. I barely remember what it was like anymore, except that I feel more at ease and relaxed. My friends and others at school have gotten used to life by now without it, but companies that depended on it have shut down for the time being that it comes all back. My father has been left without a job, but he is now trying to raise a company that will work on new things. Things that will bring this world out of the despair because of the loss over the internet. Even if it may be temporary, he wants to find ways to get through this as easy as possible.
I’ve asked my friends recently what they really think now that we have no internet; most told me that life seems slightly much more fun and less boring than it was before. The thing that they hate the most about it is the fact we can’t do our research as fast as we used to be able to. It’s funny though, how we have all gotten pretty fast at looking through books for information. No, I think I like life better now without it. There is still things I miss about it and all and will be looking forward too, but I think this was a very nice change.