Better hope no one calls you today. If they do, you won’t know.

Why?

Because your telephone isn’t connected to the phone jack. Your high speed (14K) modem is. Hope you like riding on lightning.

As your CD-ROM tray ejects, you place in it one of many free AOL discs that came in the mail. Why did they send so many? I fling the extras like frisbees at your cat, Doughnut.

Within minutes, your modem begins to dial. Eeeeeerr errrrrrrrrrrrhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. BUR BUR. Cracklecracklecrackle. NOISE!

“It’s working…!?” you stupidly exclaim.

“Duh,” I reply. Inside, I wonder why we’re even friends.

The pixels inside your 13″ Packard Bell monitor dance with excitement. One by one, they form the bits of colors that make the shapes, that form the words. If a pixel could talk, it would say, “I searched the entire world looking for magic, and then, I realized, the magic is inside of us all.”

Listen to it. The data streams through the cables. A new Niagara. A modern Mississippi. A glorious connection!

“But what if someone calls?!” you whine.

“Shut up!” I tell you. “I already said we won’t know!”

And then, you blink. You blink a slow blink. And it’s so slow, and it’s so blinky, that by time you’re done blinking… it’s there.  For the very first time, you are blinking- I mean looking- at the homepage to America Online.

Oh yeah, it took 45 minutes to do this.

Welcome to the Internet.

Your cat’s name is Doughnut.