Technology:
What it Really
Means to be
Connected
By Sonja Hegman
I
’ve always had a thing for
technology. Sometimes it’s a love/
hate thing, but a “thing”
nonetheless. I used to dream of the
day I’d fit a computer in my pocket,
but thought I’d be much older and
much grayer when it happened. It
took spending some time in my
hometown a few months ago to
realize that “being connected”
doesn’t always include WiFi.
Sheldon, Wisconsin, is not what one
would call a metropolis. When I was a
kid, it was a little more bustling than
now, but not much. We had a corner
store, actually called “The Corner
Store,” and a bar. When my parents
and I moved there when I was 8,
I assumed the kids in my class
wouldn’t know what a computer
even was, let alone be smarter than
me. Yes, I was a snob. Coming from
the “big” city of St. Paul, Minnesota,
I didn’t know that life existed
anywhere else. It was really a marvel
to me that my classmates even knew
what Sears was. I got that same
feeling on my last trip there.
My father was not tech savvy. My
sister went so far as to get him a
newish computer a few years ago.
He never turned it on. Then it’s no
surprise he didn’t have an Internet
connection at his house that I would
be stuck in for about a week. When
you work virtually, as I do, lack of a
reliable WiFi connection is not
necessarily the end of the world,
but when you factor in that I couldn’t
even get cell phone reception there,
it’s a bit of a problem.
The reason for my last trip was to
clean out my childhood home. Instead
of beginning the grieving process (my
father died on Halloween), I did
nothing but bitch about how I
couldn’t get any work done. My
clients were aware that I was out of
commission for awhile, but work gave
me an excuse to get away from my
siblings for five minutes. We all need
that. You can probably imagine that
no coffee shops with WiFi exist in
little Sheldon. The closest place I
found was a McDonald’s in Ladysmith,
roughly a half hour drive away. Since
we needed RV antifreeze (don’t ask), I
30
used it as an excuse to get out and
said I had to do some work that
required Internet. Plus, it would
probably be the last time I drove that
route I had driven hundreds of times
during adolescence.
I took the “back way.” Really, every
way is the “back way” when you live
in the sticks, but I took what was the
less beaten path from when I was
young. The road was paved now-nice. The old junk yard was still there.
It was actually a house with piles of
junk in the yard, but my Dad had
always called it “The Junk Place” or
“The Sty.” The old cheese factory
was now a car dealership-- weird
transition? And then the memories
came flooding back.