I thought there would be Wi-Fi. 

Look. I’m no stranger to the corners of the planet lacking Wi-Fi. Our family cabin, built by my husband’s grandfather in 1938, famously lacks Wi-Fi.  

And I’m glad for it. Weekends at the cabin engendered a technological flexibility in the kids. Their cabin adventures included grilled cheeses and fries at the 1950s-inspired drive-in burger joint, where a tray laden with food was hooked to the car window. 

That I accidentally trapped a kid’s head in a window I rolled up, unaware he was peering around the parking lot, is almost as famous a family story as the time a baby raccoon set up camp beneath our car as we perused the Mennonite stand occupying the burger joint’s parking lot. 

The burger joint’s chef slid a shovel beneath my car. The baby raccoon took off across a four-lane trucking highway. He was in lane four of that highway when the tractor trailer hit him. 

Do you see what fun you can have without Wi-Fi? Splattered raccoons and narrowly avoided head injuries? 

Now, I’ll be honest. I do not understand why I can’t get Wi-Fi at the cabin, or why cell phone calls drop in the cabin’s kitchen, or why texts can’t download pictures. I especially don’t understand those things when I can load The New York Times in my app or when Googling “Meghan Markle’s wedding dress” yields picture after picture on my cell phone. 

But I also don’t understand why my oven sometimes turns out a beautifully crisped whole chicken while other times it leaves it dead raw. Or the cruelty of chocolate, mud, and poop all having an indistinguishable brown hue when left on a doorknob by tiny hands. 

These are the vagaries of life. 

But in trying to get Wi-Fi where none existed recently, I dove into a world with which I was wholly unfamiliar. 

I started out trying to run Wi-Fi from my cell phone’s hotspot. 

Which I do not understand.  

If my phone can show me Meghan Markle’s wedding dress, and provide my computer with internet, why can’t my laptop just show me Meghan Markle’s wedding dress? Why is my phone an intermediary like it’s Cardinal Wolsey negotiating Henry VIII’s divorce? 

You’re the king, dude. Negotiate your own divorce.  

And I say this to my laptop as well. Smartphones may have changed the world. But the world was changed by computers first. Why can’t you, my little laptop, have the magic beans or whatever is that makes my phone capable of sharing Meghan Markle’s wedded bliss? Shouldn’t you be able to do everything my phone does and more? Why are you so big if you can’t? 

It’s also annoying that laptops can’t download a Prime rental of Killer Whale. But one problem at a time. 

Running Wi-Fi from my phone’s hotspot was reminiscent of late-90s dial-up speeds, especially when you’re a keep-multiple-tabs-open-for-a-long-long-time kind of girl. 

Hotspots were not built for multiple tab, Mennonite shopping, raccoon splattering girls like me. 

My husband suggested our car’s Wi-Fi. 

Which I did not know existed. 

Turning on my car, I located the Wi-Fi feature. There was a verification process, then an account establishment, then fine-print terms. Twenty minutes later, I was running Wi-Fi off the car. 

But only as long as the car was running. 

That I am prissy enough to complain about the cabin’s primitive nature is not my favorite thing about myself. I did not want to feel worse by dumping carbon monoxide into the world.  

Growing desperate — see “prissy,” above — I clicked on my laptop’s Wi-Fi icon. Maybe there was Wi-Fi in my desolate location. Maybe I missed something. 

My Wi-Fi display showed me three Wi-Fi connections, “COPA Campus,” “COPA Mobile,” and “COPA Guest.” The first two were password protected. The last wasn’t. 

I don’t know a lot about Wi-Fi connections. Which translates to a general fear of all public Wi-Fi. Open-access Wi-Fi sources scare me. I picture a man in some nearby, dank basement, waiting for a prissy girl like me to join his ruse of a Wi-Fi connection. Then — boom! — he now has access to my raw chicken recipe and collection of Meghan Markle fashionwear. 

I Googled “COPA” on my phone. 

Since, you know, my phone can Google without Wi-Fi but my laptop can’t. 

So dumb. 

I mean, really. Is, like, Mission Control in Houston relaying information to the astronauts from their phones because the phones are more technologically advanced than Mission Control’s computers? 

Also, why could the Artemis crew send pictures from space, but I can’t get Wi-Fi a measly ten minutes from civilization? 

Googling “COPA” brought up a bevy of possibilities. Copa Airlines. Civilian Office of Police Accountability in Chicago. Cirrus Owners and Pilots Association. COPA Soccer Training. 

Now, I’m pretty sure Pennsylvania is not so close to the Civilian Office of Police Accountability in Chicago that Wi-Fi sharing is a matter of routine.  

I clicked on “COPA Guest.” 

I’m sorry. I had to. 

A little window popped up, offering to connect me to Pennsylvania’s Office of Administration guest Wi-Fi. 

But the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania graphic in the pop-up box was not what I know to be the Pennsylvania state government graphic. 

I shut down the pop-up. I logged back into the car’s Wi-Fi with all apologies to Mother Nature, whose flying minions were buzzing through the car’s open windows, stinging my ears, my hands, my neck. 

That’s when I noticed the car’s Wi-Fi had a little notice. “Weak Security.” 

Huh. 

I Googled “VPN.” Clicked on the first website the car’s insufficiently secure Wi-Fi populated to my laptop.  

I thought about that guy in the dank basement. Maybe engaging with a VPN through the car’s Wi-Fi wasn’t the right move. 

I turned off my computer.  

Somehow, splattered raccoons suddenly felt a whole lot safer.