I had something on my ‘Things I Keep Putting Off’ list. I wanted to route the Internet through my house.

A four-lane blacktop would have been easier. They implied that it could happen in America.

You know who I mean. ‘They’ are those disembodied, ethereal forces that forecasted a television set in every home and a Ford in every driveway.

I started out with one item on a list, but soon I had a mission.

Day One.

Today is the day. I am going to have a column in the Daily; the time is now to keep on keeping up with the moving and shaking going on in our technological world.

I feel that it would be expected of me. How can anyone portend to speak to issues if they can’t even navigate one little super-highway? It’s almost a social defect to not be enlightened in the Ways of the Web.

I shall have the Internet in my house to broaden the minds of all who reside there; on my phone line so all those endearing bill-collectors and charming telemarketers get nothing but busy signals; and on my computer competing with F15-Strike Eagle III, Phantasmagoria, and Shivers.

A helpful young man in the Help Room in Durham said ‘it’s easy.’ Well, I don’t exactly remember the word ‘easy’, but it seems like he said that.

He told me to request a PPP server through my Vincent account, and told me that ‘They’ would get back to me when it was ready. Okay, cool.

That went well enough. He told me to bring a disk and get some Winsock, and Ewan, and stuff. Did that. Right out of Public Access — a regular cake-walk.

I now have Ewan, Trumpet Winsock, and Ws_Ftp, which seem to all be related in some way and have to work together to be ‘my Ftp server’.

I am still trying to figure out what exactly that is, but I think I’ve got enough of it to click all the buttons. I mean, any monkey can push a button, right?

Now all I have to do is get online and find the Netscape Navigator.

Guess what? I make a good monkey. I pushed and clicked and hunted and pecked. I found at least twelve hundred files with suspicious, FBI-encoded names that I was not looking for. Back to the Help Room go I.

Day Two.

A helpful young woman in the Help Room in Durham wrote down some instructions to find the elusive Navigator. Back at home, I eagerly attempted again.

Connection or something not valid, something else not right, not connecting; all kinds of wonderfully profound, helpful messages came forth.

I automatically assumed I was an incompetent moron in spite of my grade point, and I must have been clicking or typing incorrectly.

Maybe I wouldn’t make such a great monkey after all. Perhaps there is a keystroke pressure thing nobody ever told me about.

I tried the instructions again. Determined not to let my children know that I am not all-powerful and wise, I searched in cleverly random and unstructured ways until I encountered win16.exe and win32.exe! Both of which are extremely large and each take more hours to download than I get to sleep in a day.

I say ‘each,’ because win16.exe didn’t work for reasons I won’t go into, and I quite illogically assumed I must need win32.exe. I eventually discovered that both of them are for Windows 95, which by the way, I do not have. So for roughly two days the house was devoid of incoming calls, which also means no outgoing calls could be made either. Like, to the Help Room.

The peace and quiet would have been nice except for the frustrated howling and hair-pulling that my children now associate with bringing the Internet into the house.

Day Five.

A helpful young man in the Help Room in Durham said he only just yesterday used the very instructions I described and had absolutely no trouble with them.

Hmmm. I smile and begin to understand now.

This is a plot by some government (I won’t say it’s ours, but if the subversiveness fits…) designed for some obscure research project to see how easily everyday people can be broken, making them more complacent and easier to get along with.

Well, okay. No problem — I’ll just try it again. And behold (twenty-seven minutes later), the heavens ‘they’ did open and the Navigator sprang forth and appeared to be downloading.

But now I just smile. I’m onto them now. They’re teasing me again, I’m certain of it.

The Ames school district sent a pamphlet with their parent new-letter describing how crucial and desirable it is for children to learn to use, and benefit from, the Internet.

I am using it as a fly-swatter.

Day Seven.

Well, the bill-collectors will still be able to reach my house, the game Shivers still rules, and there won’t be any mind-broadening going on around here.

The Navigator did download, and it likes me, but it doesn’t like my version of something called Win32s. The Navigator has stomped its little foot and refuses to cooperate until I bring it a better one.

I’m still trying, and I won’t let it end this way. The outlook may seem bleak, but I promise I will be bumping into all technologically enlightened people on the Web. Look for me, I’ll be the one with the slightly glassy-eyed address.

Of course, it may be awhile because the next item on my list is to navigate the Navigator. Should be a piece of cake, huh? Or, maybe I should say a piece of monkey bread.

Audrae Jones is a senior in English from Clear Lake.