WI-FI
SANITY ON BACKORDER
From Hive Peak Boulevard
By Danu Marche, Humor Columnist
Published: January 11, 2025
Synapse & Spectacle
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This week, my Wi-Fi decided it has a flair for performance art.
I’m not talking about the occasional buffering wheel. I’m talking about a full-scale interpretive dance of connection bars — up, down, gone, back again — like it’s auditioning for a role in a modern Greek tragedy. And naturally, it only performs when I actually need it. If I’m doomscrolling nonsense at 2 a.m., it’s flawless. But open a time-sensitive document at noon? Suddenly we’re in Act III: The Fates Have Spoken.
See, Wi-Fi is a silent partner in our lives — the kind that looks reliable until it’s time to split the bill. You’re streaming a critical work meeting, halfway through a carefully phrased point, and then… freeze-frame. Now your face is stuck in a grimace you’ve never made before and will never live down. People will screenshot it. They will make memes.
And the timing! Always the timing. My connection can spend hours running a 4K nature documentary in the background without so much as a hiccup. But try sending one urgent email, and it collapses faster than a folding chair at a family reunion. The router blinks at you like, “Oh… were you using that?”
Let’s not forget the ritualistic troubleshooting. First, you turn the Wi-Fi off and back on — because, apparently, we all have IT degrees now. Then you restart the router. Then you stare into the blinking lights like you’re reading tea leaves. Finally, you do the universal “tech support stretch” — a slow walk around the house holding your laptop like a divining rod, searching for the one spot the internet gods still favor.
And yes, the squirrel in a dusty snow vest saw all of this. Today’s sighting: clinging to the top of the drainpipe like Spider-Man with one paw while dangling a section of branch in the other — like it had just intercepted my last hope of connectivity. It locked eyes with me, chewed once (purely for emphasis), and dropped the branch to the ground with the solemnity of a judge delivering a life sentence.
Alright, fine. Let’s talk about the people who insist it’s your device that’s the problem. “Have you tried another computer?” they ask, as though I have a spare 17-inch laptop just sipping a gimlet in a chaise longue, waiting for its moment. Or the ones who suggest plugging in with an Ethernet cable — which, in 2025, feels like being told to connect to the cloud via carrier pigeon.
But the real betrayal is how calm the network is when the crisis passes. Once the deadline expires, the connection reappears, full bars, smug as a cat who just knocked something off a shelf. No apology, no explanation. Just sitting there, daring you to trust it again.
Which brings us back to the original tragedy: I do trust it again. Because what’s the alternative? Live like it’s 1997? I can barely remember how to fold a paper map, let alone survive on phone calls and printed directions. So I accept the terms — unreliable connection, occasional public humiliation, and an ongoing power struggle with a squirrel who clearly has his own agenda.
Until then, I’ll keep the router on life support and my expectations in airplane mode.
“If your Wi-Fi has ever personally wronged you, please send notarized statements so we can start a class-action lawsuit — or at least a support group.”
©2025 Danu Marche
