Temporarliy Suspended

Ok, I'm ashamed to admit this but last Monday, my cable, internet, and phone were all "temporarily suspended" because I didn't pay the bill. It has been an extremely tough winter on me, as well as many others, financially and I just didn't have the money. I decided that we needed heat and food more than we needed tv and internet. Luckily, it was spring break week so I didn't have to turn any assignments in. However, I didn't want my son (he's 6) to know that this had happened so I had to come up with some creative ways of getting around the tv not working. Monday was no big deal because I had a meeting after work and he went to my parents house and was asleep when I picked him up. Tuesday was a beautiful day. When he got home from school we went for a 2 mile walk and really enjoyed just talking and laughing and taking in the beauty of nature. Wednesday was a different story. School was cancelled! And since I work at a school, that meant we were both home all day together. When he went to the living room and turned the tv on, he found that it wasn't working. I, of course, played dumb when he asked me what was wrong with the tv. But the heavy snow was my saving grace that day. Between the snow and the high winds, a power line behind our house was hanging down, about 2 feet off of the ground. He automatically assumed that this was the reason the tv wasn't working. And this was also the day that we found out our dvd player wasn't working either. So that day, we played. We played one-on-one basketball in the hallway just like one of the boys in a book he borrowed from the library a few weeks ago. We pretended we were cowboys from the "old western days" and he was the deputy and I was the criminal. We moved all of my house plants around and pretended we were animals who lived in a jungle, just like in the book "Rumble in the Jungle".  We read 3 of his "Skippyjohn Jones" books and then we looked through his closet for things that could help him to pretend to be someone else or somewhere else. We had a FABULOUS day. I was able to read for a little bit while he was doing some of his homework. We did more on that day, together, than we had done in a long time. It got me thinking about the days before all this technology and how different this world was. I will never forget all the fun things we did that day and I hope that he won't either. Thursday was another busy day and then Friday I was able to pay the bill and the cable and internet were turned back on. In a way, I was a little reluctant to get it turned back on because of all the wonderful things that happened while it was "temporarily suspended".