A Connection-Less Week

I'm sitting here at StarBucks, with my grande skim mocha, writing to you. Why, you ask? Well, for the past week, I have had no Internet access. That's right folks, one whole week away from cyberspace. No facebook, no email, no online solitaire. No wasting the night away, glassy-eyed and slack-jawed, staring at YouTube videos of "OMG SO CUTE" kittens and other assorted woodland creatures.

I know, it's crazy - a teenager actually survived being away from the internet for an entire week. But before you give me that look, let me take it one step further. I didn't have a television either. That is correct, my dear sirs and madams, I have been lacking both Internet access and television for a whole week. How did I do it?

Well, I have to tell you that I did not suffer my connectionless plight at home, but rather in my favorite place in the whole wide world: My family's little green cabin nestled by a little lake in a little town in New Hampshire. Now, this cabin has been in my family since my mom was a little kid, and I've been coming here since before I was born. There's fishing to be done, and boats to be rowed, and swings to be swung on, and candy stores to be visited. However, in the quiet moments, there is no TV to turn to, or computer to play on. There are books. Dusty, musty old books under beds and in closets to be dug out by bored people like me.

Since I arrived, I have been reading my way through a good chunk of the Hardy Boys series, one of my personal favorites. And I have all the good classics, like Lewis Carroll's "Through the Looking Glass," to continue once I finish with the Hardys. I love to read, and I love old books. I'll take the original over a Borders copy any day. They have character. So I sit and I read and I swim and I think and I read some more. That's pretty much all I do. Who needs YouTube when you have Hardy boys mysteries to solve? Not me.

It makes me think how technology has taken over our lives. Especially teenagers. We are always attached to our phones and our iPods and our iPads, myself not excluded. What happened to the wholesome days of the Little House on the Prairie? It's amazing how times have changed. I know if my Pa pulled out a fiddle after dinner and started to play, I would run for the television instead. My gadget-less week at the cabin has reminded me that there's more to life then what so-and-so just posted on Facebook, but that's still going to be the first thing I check when I get home. It seems times have changed for good.

Yours Truly,

Rach