Only Connect

My phone service and high-speed Internet service started to break down a few months before I broke up with the man I was living with. As stressful as this development in my personal life was, it did mean that I could get a brand-new email account in my new home. Sadly, a trouble-free connection was not to be. Over six months of constantly interrupted on-line service, I was given the following reasons for my Internet malfunctions:

• Sympatico High Speed didn’t work well in my neighbourhood
• a squirrel had chewed the line
• there was a problem down the street with a “box”
• I was supposed to turn off the modem when using my portable phone
• they had given me a password that was “inappropriate for my area”
• I, or someone impersonating me, had cancelled my account
• maybe an extra filter was required on the wall jack
• my dsl cord was too long
• my iBook had the wrong operating system.

Note that my Internet Service Provider (isp) was Bell Sympatico. I want to name names here. I also wanted to make a long, detailed list of every single thing that went wrong, but my editors said no. They told me to use a conventional narrative structure in order to “tell a story.”

That reminds me of the opening line of The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford: “This is the saddest story I have ever heard.” Except this isn’t a story about the hideous failure of a twisted marriage. It’s worse. It’s the story of being disconnected through the failure of modern technology.

It all started, as mentioned, in the ex-partner’s house: mixed messages, scrambled signals, and ultimately a complete breakdown in communication. I knew I had to be honest about my true feelings and end it. So I called Bell Sympatico and told them to cancel both my phone and Internet accounts—though I’m not sure they realized they were being dumped. It took three calls to three different offices to cancel, and at the end of each conversation the person on the line would say, “Thanks for using Bell!” at which point I would say, “I’m not using you! I’m cancelling you!” But they had already hung up.

Not long after that, I packed up and moved out. I began a new life in a new home with a new email address: ellenvanstone4@sympatico.ca. At first, everything seemed to go well. I settled in with a pile of unpacked boxes and yet another configuration in my life of hastily bought ikea furniture. But for some reason, I put off sending out a group email to everyone with my new contact information. It was that ellenvanstone4@sympatico.ca address. I hated being fourth. Why couldn’t I have my old email address: evanstone@sympatico.ca? Could someone else already have taken it over? After a couple of weeks of wondering, I checked it out on the Sympatico website and guess what? It was never cancelled. And there were a bunch of unread emails sitting there.