Online

I spent a large part of Sunday working online. I was so focused that I was leaning towards the screen. Well, I guess I leaned too far forward and fell into the Internet.

Everything was amazingly bright. It was hard to look at the things around me without wincing. Sometimes I had to shield my eyes with my hands.

After a few moments I could see clearly. I saw huge words walk past me. They had a definitive sense of purpose. I got in their way and they swore and pushed me aside. Then these words vigorously joined up with groups of other words and formed sentences and paragraphs. It turns out they were putting on a news story.

Then a big photo slid by to join the words. The people in the photo looked at me. They must have sensed I was out of place. I heard one person say to another, “What’s he doing here?”

It was all very exciting until I fell into a stream of numbers. They carried me with such ferocity that I thought I would get torn apart and turned into electricity. I realized it was the rivers of html, the undercurrent of the Internet. I thought it would be the end of me.

But the numbers buckled and coughed me up and I was spit up into YouTube. I got into a video screen and sent myself to my sister. She got the video, opened it up and I looked through the screen to her face. She laughed. She thought it was a silly video from me. But then I pointed out what she was wearing, and she got it. She had some of her coworkers hold one of her arms and she leaned in and grabbed and pulled me out.

It was exciting, but I’ve decided to cut back on the time I spend on the Internet.