I suppose I will out myself as a Verizon customer. Which is to say the other day, my phone only had signal near the places it had Wifi. It was a day we were expecting a heavy snow storm in the evening, and I had biked my way to work. I was pretty sure I’d outrun it. My husband wrote to me that he worried if I had trouble, I couldn’t contact him. Eh, I bike home all the time. It’s usually drama-free. Besides, at this point, I have a lot of faith in my ability to problem solve my challenges.

I have been in a relationship with my husband for 20 years. Text messaging has existed for most of it. We are not always physically in each other’s presence, but always a message away. I do not need to wait to share my thoughts – it’s type and send. I almost always know what he’s up to, not in a controlling way but in a curious, we-are-in-it-together sort of way. I know a lot of other couples are the same. It’s the closest I get to being telepathically connected to someone. We are not always together, but I never feel alone.

So I leave my office and hop on my bike. In the first turn I made, something was really wrong. A brushing sound. I pull over to the sidewalk and dismount. The front tire is flat It’s flat enough that I know I can’t refill it and hope for the best. The bike garage was quite hot and the day was cold. I had filled my tire before I left home. I suspected it burst in the temperature change.

I was still in the shadow of my office building’s Wifi, and I texted my husband. He cannot get me for a while, but no big deal: I’m on a bus line. I don’t have exact change for the fare but I can download the app… which I can do because of the aforementioned office building Wifi. Great. As it was loading, the bus goes by. I’ll catch the next one. No big deal.

The bus is always more pleasant than I expect it to be. I do not generally take it because I am in the phase of life where I need to time my arrivals to that of my children. Fare for a family is more expensive than gas for the car I’ve already paid for. My bike is frankly faster, and I control the arrivals and departures. But these moments happen. I step on. I look out the window. The bus slows life down, creates this breezy space to breathe. I notice teenagers having a conversation, as interested in each other as they are whatever they are discussing. A gentleman is excited to see the driver and to talk about the Bills. My phone says SOS.

I get off the bus and take my bike off the rack. I walk over to the bike shop because there’s more than a flat tire wrong with it, but every thing else had been ignorable. The door is locked, but not for long. The shop owner recognizes me through the window and opens it. Our conversation is pleasant: the only type I’ve ever had with him. And then I walk home.

My kids are in sports. This is the day they both have their practices. I take my daughter to hers, and return. I take my son to his, and stay. My husband will get our daughter. I have no cell phone reception through any of this. I’m spending the idle time reading a book. I’m leaving out a lot of details here except I’ll say this: my son is OK now. But to get from there to here involved a trip to the emergency room of the children’s hospital. The map app says it takes 15 minutes. I ended up driving behind the three people in the City of Buffalo who diligently follow the speed limit. I was full of adrenaline. It felt like ages.

The hospital had cell phone reception. My husband did not.

I knew in my bones this was going to be fine, and calmed myself accordingly. I would eventually get a hold of him, he would eventually find out. I left a message on our household’s landline. The house itself has Wifi. News will get to him. The play-by-play of what’s going on that I am so used to giving him? That would need to wait.

As foreseen, he got home. Hospital and house wifi, we gave each other the play-by-play that we are in the habit of doing in these situations.

I sometimes wonder what life was like for the person who lived in my house when it was built (1898 or so). If someone didn’t come home, did she pace the house worrying? Did she only dread the news in the morning when she read it, to go about her day only hearing what people could physically tell her? She may not have yet had a telephone. Did her social life include walking next door, or to church, to patiently put up with people instead of being able to find the folks who were exactly kindred spirits through the internet? The amount of information to consume had to be smaller than what makes its way to my awareness.

There is a lot going on right now, and I am aware of a lot of it. The news doesn’t take a day to get to us. You do not need to wait for Channel 3’s broadcast around dinner to find out something happened. You know almost immediately, something, maybe not something accurate. You do not need to sit down and pick up a phone to communicate with someone, giving them your full attention. You can send messages as you’re elsewhere, to many people at a time. The connections you seek are more deliberate. When I’m walking to the grocery store, I don’t know if or which neighbors I will encounter. When I send a text, your name is the one I typed in. An algorithm tells me if I see your Facebook post, the electronic version of putting a sign in your yard or on a bulletin board in a dorm.

When so many people lost their cell phone connection, it was almost like we were Borg drones who had been disconnected from a collective. Kind of. We still had Wifi, and the Internet. Whenever I was away from both, the information input slowed to that which was immediately in front of me. Yet, I instinctively was looking for other ways to maintain that tether, that sense of connection. I felt out of equilibrium being actually alone. This is a different way to experience social connection than people have historically done. Hyperconnectivity is territory we chart as we go. We’ve latched onto it because so many of our instincts are to be magnets for connection.

Given the events, I was a bit anxious being out of reach of my husband. At the same time, the calm and quiet of diminished information was actually kind of nice. Like the reason I enjoy being in the woods, or meditating.

Then Verizon fixed its issues and we continued on like nothing had ever happened.