Locked Down With No Internet

I wish I was invisible. Then no one could shout at me, like what happened today, when Uncle Percy cut the Wi-Fi cord. How did this happen? Well, to be honest, I have no idea. So let’s get goin’ with the bits and pieces I know.

The house was comparatively calm, since Aunt Maureen’s birthday a few days ago. We had a few slip-ups, but it all turned out well at the end. I was proud of the achievement we made, so I was celebrating by watching ‘At Home with Olaf’. Tamara was on Instagram, and Pepper was trying to bake a cake. Suddenly, the video started buffering. I refreshed the page and a notification flashed on the screen. ‘No internet’, it said. Tamara was also facing a similar problem. Pepper, well she wrecked the kitchen when the video stopped working. She tried to complete the cake herself, and we had a mini-explosion. We soon found the source of the internet issue. Take a guess who it is. Yep, it’s uncle. He was playing with the triplets, got tangled with the cord, and snapped it into two pieces. So, the reason for survival in this lockdown has been destroyed.

Just then aunt came back from the grocery store. She took one look at us and asked, “Who died?” “Our Wi-Fi,” was the answer. When she heard this, all the grocery bags fell from her hands. Ketchup oozed out of one bag, egg yolks out of another, baked beans out of a paper packet, you name it, it was there. “Wha- how-why,” she spluttered out. “It’s uncle’s fault,” Tamara said sourly and stalked off. Aunt gave each of us a long, hard look. I could feel her eyes boring into Pepper’s brain like she knew what happened to the kitchen. “Pepper you better get ready to fry,” I whispered at her. Her green eyes flashed. She doesn’t like us teasing her about her name, and when we tease her, her eyes flash like a witch’s. Finally, Aunt broke the silence. “Pepper go clean the kitchen. Rachel, help me clean up the mess here. Tamara, go get groceries. And Percy,” she said, talking like how she does when Tyson breaks stuff, “go sit in timeout for half an hour.” “But I don’t want to!” “Percy, go sit in timeout for one hour.” “Fine”, he groaned.

We began our tasks. So long, ‘At Home with Olaf’. And here I thought vacation would be relaxing. After 10 minutes, I got the groceries out of the way. I went to the kitchen to get some lemonade, and I found Pepper frosting all the cake bits left in the platter. “Pepper, what the heck are you doing?” “Salvaging my cake.” She began to eat it. “Shouldn’t you be cleaning the kitchen,” Aunt Maureen said from the doorway. “I’ll do it once I eat,” came the reply. Aunt sighed and left the kitchen.

Now that all the cleanup and uncle’s timeout was done, we came to the most serious problem of all- the Wi-Fi. We called the Wi-Fi company, and they said they would send a guy over by tomorrow, by one in the afternoon. So we had to survive for 24 hours, without the internet. Oh god!

 Tamara walked in with the groceries and we had lunch. To pass the time, we all went out into the garden and played with colored chalk for an hour or two. Then we found some water guns and did aunt a favor by watering her plants with powder paint. Finally, aunt had to call us in, before she had multicolor roses, instead of just white.

 As soon as we got in, we had a heated argument about who would get to the shower first, and before long, we started fighting outside the bathroom. In all this, Tamara went into the bathroom. By the time Pepper and I realized what had happened, Tamara walked out, wearing a white top. Pepper had a rather mischievous idea. She walked up to Tamara, and said, “I need a hug.” Without waiting for her response, Pepper hugged Tamara, getting color all over her clothes. And that was the start of another fight. I was a spectator to the WWE that followed because that top was supposed to be Tamara’s only white top. Aunt broke the fight and sent us to our rooms. We had dinner separately because we were all on the brink of fighting.

In all this, what was uncle doing? Well, he had taken the triplets to watch a movie he had downloaded a long time ago. But he forgot that it was a horror movie. Now, what do you think would have happened? Rebecca had her eyes glued to the screen. Ditto, Millie. Tyson was busy scribbling on Uncle Percy’s shirt. Uncle, on the other hand, was acting like a baby. He was screaming, kicking, crying, and pleading with the kids to turn the movie off. In the end, aunt walked over, taped uncle’s mouth, and sat down to watch the movie too.

 The next day, the guy who had to fix our Wi-Fi came early. He took one look at the cord and said, “the cord was unplugged, and there was another cord that leads to some decorative that was broken. I plugged the cord in for you. That’ll be $500.” Aunt paid him, and the second he was out of the house she said, “well, I wonder who said the Wi-Fi cord broke.” We all blamed uncle, then went back to our posts- Tamara on the sofa, Pepper in the kitchen, and me on the rug. Well, I gotta say, the internet is more important than water in this family.