When did I become so addicted to my e-mail?

Impatiently, I tapped my fingers. “Load. Come on, load!”

I almost chanted like a tribal elder trying to conjure up ancient spirits.

Finally, my head drooped. There was no hope. My e-mail was down.

This happened Wednesday night. As I write this on Thursday, my Gmail account is still inactive.

Inside, I feel like a little piece of me has died. When did e-mail become so integral to my life?

I’ve always joked about technology, that I’ve been interested in it and despise it at the same time. I still get comments on my “Why I hate Facebook” column and pats on the back for holding out on the latest trend of social networking.

But here I was, shaking like a recovering smoker jonesing for a cig. What if someone e-mails me something important? What if I’m offered a trade in fantasy football and can’t respond quick enough because I didn’t get my e-mail alert? How many funny forwards from my father-in-law will I miss?

The answer to that one is 12 — he normally sends at least 12 forwards a day. That’s a slow day.

As I sat brooding, I tried to remember the last time I didn’t have e-mail. It had to have been in high school, and even though my wife likes to call me old, e-mail had been invented when I was in high school.

However, you had to check it on one of those old PCs at school, the ones with the green text that lit up the reader’s face like they’d just ingested a pound of uranium. Maybe that’s why I wasn’t too keen on it.

In college, I discovered Hotmail, which was the big thing then. It’s funny how times change. Ten years ago or so, Hotmail was all the rage. Later, you were nothing if you didn’t have a Yahoo account and Yahoo messenger. Now it’s Gmail.

You can use Gchat to talk to your friends, you can upload funny messages to your status updates, and you schedule your whole life with Google’s handy calendar. As for Hotmail, only
grandmas use it. At least my mom does.

Darn, I just tried again. No e-mail.

It always strikes me as funny how we rely on things now that weren’t even invented 10 years ago.

I own a GPS, which is sometimes both a curse and a blessing. In one ear, I have the GPS telling me which way to go; in the other ear, I have my wife (who I affectionately call AAA because she always knows where she is going) yelling at me I’m going the wrong way.

Ten years ago, I wouldn’t have had a GPS, which would have made my life simpler. I’d only have one woman yelling at me. Now, I’ve got my GPS voice (I call her Helga) screaming at me in a Swedish accent everywhere I go.

Whatever happened to just picking up a map? Are kids these days going to know how to read a map, or are they just going to rely on an electric device to tell them where to go?

iPods are all the rage now, but 10 years ago people were still listening to CD Walkmen. In fact I had one hooked up to my car stereo, but it skipped every time I hit a bump, pothole or turned left. Now I jam out to my iPod, only it shuffles every time I hit a bump.

I guess some things never change.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go e-mail everyone from my backup account to tell them that my normal account is down.

Yahoo, here I come.