Jake Bailey

Life lessons from Wi-Fi

My Wi-Fi has been playing up lately. There has to be some primal instinct that is responsible for the deep-seated rage that temperamental Wi-Fi induces. There are few other difficulties one will face on a regular basis that can take one from tepid to boiling over the brim in a split second. Stubbing your toe, although pain is certainly a factor in this. The sound of an unfamiliar baby crying, although this is also a primal instinct according to some science I read. People who walk slow on footpaths or in malls during busy shopping hours.

As a young person lacking practical skills to fix most things, I’ve always been a big believer in whacking things to fix them. Applicable not to strangers’ babies, or people who walk slowly, but almost everything else.

It goes by a few names. Experts like myself refer to it as “percussive maintenance”. Some may know it as the more delicate “kinetic readjustment”. Naming aside, it’s more than a skill — it’s an art.

Despite how it sounds, I pride myself on my reasonably long fuse. I have raised my voice to someone four times in my life now. My year one teacher’s advice of breathing deep and counting to 10 has held me in excellent stead as of yet, even if it does make me look odd during arguments.

However, there was a moment a few years back now where a Wi-Fi modem bore the brunt of my most vicious attack on anything or anyone to date.

I was on a home leave from hospital during chemotherapy, which clearly no one had advised the WiFi modem of given its unwillingness to cut me any slack, unlike others around me at the time. Usual steps like restarting it and troubleshooting weren’t getting me anywhere. So, short of any more solutions, I calmly unplugged the cables from the back of the feeble black plastic box before launching it across the room as a faux Frisbee. My arm strength wasn’t great at the time but was enough to create a satisfying thud, and a dissatisfying dent in the wall.

My mum, who had been informed that I had cancer and therefore understood that I was apparently allowed to get away with anything short of murder, politely walked past the dent in the wall (located right beside a frequented doorframe) for months before noting it aloud to me. But alas, the Wi-Fi worked again the next day. Whether it was fate, fortune, or skilful rearrangement of the internal electrical components, I will never know, but it only reinforced my belief in violence toward inanimate objects as a method to create progress.

Or maybe mum figured out that the strange new dent in the wall was modem-shaped, and called the internet people.

Regardless, I haven’t tried that yet this time. I’d like to think I’ve matured since then, but in reality, it’s probably just that I now own the modem and have a bond against the wall. So I had to find another solution to the problem.

The solution hasn’t come in any practical way. Actually, it has come from within, just like it does in any good kids movie.

I’ve been staying out in a pretty rural area for the last few weeks, doing my best impression of a country lad, and if I thought the WiFi was bad in my flat, then I was kidding myself. The Wi-Fi here is so slow that I’ll be lucky to even send this away to be printed on the paper in front of you. The Wi-Fi here is so slow that I’ve started breeding carrier pigeons. The Wi-Fi here is so slow that I started writing this column earlier than the day before it was due, because procrastination isn’t even a factor in my life anymore. I suppose that’s a lesson I’ll hold on to. Sometimes, reframing things is an easier way to fix them than fixing them. I’ll be bloody grateful for my Wi-Fi when I get home, and a little extra gratitude never hurt anybody. And hey, I didn’t even get stuck on hold with the tech support centre for an hour in the process. Win-win.

Maybe mum figured out [the new dent] in the wall was modem-shaped, and called the internet people.