24 hours without WiFi: What we learnt as a family

The anxiety we felt and the agony of being without WiFi was simply not funny.

The weekend just past was a learning opportunity for us as a family. You see, we were forced to spend a full day without the Internet when I managed to reset our house's primary router. Now resetting a router isn't a big deal - all I had to do to get life back to normal was to simply reconfigure it. And therein lay the problem. Those who've ever configured a router will know that it requires a computer with an Ethernet port (a jack similar to the wall socket where you'd plug in the telephone cable). I no longer own a desktop at home, and none of the MacBooks we have come with an Ethernet port.
Now, I could access my work e-mails on my mobile, but since my 3GB mobile Internet package barely lasts the month, I just couldn't share it for Netflix and YouTube binging. It being a Friday, I decided that getting WiFi back could wait until the next morning, when I would gallivant to work and borrow a laptop with an Ethernet port from the IT department. Big mistake. Within the first hour of no WiFi, my little one realised she had homework to do, for which she needed online access to ClassDojo. My elder one developed an urgent need to research for his upcoming school presentation, and my better half realised she had to call 'back home' via the Botim app, for which we have a home subscription service.
The anxiety we felt and the agony of being without WiFi was simply not funny. Our need for WiFi in the first couple of hours seemed to have trumped our need for water but once withdrawal symptoms receded (they did), we were pleasantly surprised at the time we had on our hands. We played board games, chatted as a family (after perhaps an aeon), and even went for a walk in the evening. It was as if someone had given us the gift of time. Our router problem was addressed the next day (thank you, KT Systems) but not before we as a family learnt a vital lesson - there are more important relationships in life than the WiFi connection.