I have no idea what life was like before I had email.
Really. I would have spent less time with my laptop, primarily because I wouldn't have owned one. I would not have been on the receiving end of funny videos or Groupon pitches. I would not have received electronic confirmations for restaurant reservations or book orders or airline bookings.
Had I wanted a book, I would have had to leave the house and go to a store.
Had someone wanted to tell me a joke, that person would have had to pick up a telephone and dial my number.
Weird. Honestly can't recall it.
I say this because I have a hankering to experience that time again - to some degree anyway. Let's just say I'd like to loosen the email connection.
Like most people, I tend to check my email, oh, more than a few times a day. The inbox is decidedly different than the mailbox, which I visit once a day, five days a week, to retrieve the old-fashioned paper variety. Decidedly different indeed.
"I am going to try to check my inbox just once a day," I informed the husband.
He was looking at his BlackBerry.
"Oh," he said, without looking up. "Why are you going to do that?" "Because I could be doing other things," I said. "Just think of all the time I'd free up!" "Oh," he said. "What kind of things?" "Man!" I said. "Where to begin! With the time I'd save I could take ballet lessons! I could learn to speak Portuguese! I could take a course on hieroglyphic
interpretation!" "Do you really want to do that?" asked the husband.
"Not really," I said. "But you get the idea."
Stepping back from my devices - the cell phone, the laptop, the desktop - would also allow me to reestablish the kind of social connection I would have had with human beings in that pre-email world, I added.
"The husband nodded, furiously texting someone or other.
I would go for more walks, I said. I would spend more time collecting pretty rocks and coloured leaves and enchanting pieces of driftwood. My cell phone pinged. An email had arrived.
It was probably junk, I told myself. Probably a notification from one of the many retail mailing lists I was on, advising me that someplace or other was having a sale.
"Aren't you going to check that?" asked the husband.
Just this once, I told myself. Then I'd focus on ballet.
