Original
Everything that happens when the internet goes down for ten minutes
- Everyone notices within four seconds. Nobody says anything for thirty.
- The first person says it out loud. The room is grateful.
- Four people simultaneously turn WiFi off and on, as a ritual rather than a fix.
- Somebody switches to mobile data and announces it, like a rescue.
- The router is looked at. It is a box with lights. The lights are consulted as though they were a language.
- The router is unplugged. A silence is observed for ten seconds.
- Someone begins a sentence with “back in the load-shedding days”.
- It returns. Nobody mentions it again. No one will ever know what happened.