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Communicating offline

By on December 12, 2016

Right, of course, the Internet. There is no need to panic on the morning of a dinner party for seven, when answers can always be found at the click of a button. No need to compile a list of recipes – it can all be found on the trusty BBC homepage. No need to worry about lost mechanical instructions, they’re all replicated online. No need to even think up that dinner party for seven menu plan, just asked a search engine what magic can be conjured up with the leftover things in your fridge. Wonderful!

After YouTube had been consulted, viewed and re-enacted, I asked my boyfriend what exactly we would do without the Internet. “Well, I’d probably phone my mum, she’d know,” came his reply. And truth be told, his answer made me feel a little sad. That is, after all, what mums are for: to pass on their years of knowledge and rice-cooking to ignorant offspring, to teach us the family recipes handed down from generation to generation, to calm us when the tensions in the kitchen are high and the cheese sauce won’t thicken. And it’s these simple questions that keep us connected, encourage us to make that spontaneous phone call, and stay in touch. I vowed next time to phone home. I was determined not to let this new technology destroy my familial communications. Internet sminternet!

Two days later I got a call from an old friend asking if I had received a package from him during my recent visit back home to England. Disappointingly, I hadn’t. I was eager to trace its whereabouts, since it contained a lengthy letter and Christmas goodies. “Oh, how wonderful that you hand-wrote a letter, not one of these impersonal e-mail greetings.” I gushed, and filled with glee, I knew exactly which number to call next. This was a job for Mum. She would know the post-office contact details and how to track it. Heck, she probably knows the postman! I’d get this letter sent across the ocean in no time!

“Mum, it’s me,” I chirped as I heard her familiar voice on the other end. “I need a favour. Could you get the number of the post office in town so that I can track some post? I’m good Mum, I’m doing well. Yes, the weather’s nice here. Yes I now that it’s seven in the evening for you, that’s why I called. So about that phone number…”

“Oh I don’t know darling,” came the unenthusiastic response from the other end of the line. “Your father always checks the Google. Don’t they have the Internet over there?”

About Samantha Green