While I was reading my e-mails this morning, I heard a click and up popped an alert that I had been disconnected from the Internet. I couldn’t finish the article I was reading in the New York Times.

I didn’t think much about it at the time, because I get disconnected after so many minutes if I don’t keep surfing. But, when I tried to reconnect and couldn’t, I knew I had a problem. It kept telling me I didn’t have a phone connection, but I knew I did. Well, I thought so anyway.

I checked everything, connections, plug-ins, my equipment; I even turned the computer off and rebooted it to be sure there wasn’t something going on with my laptop. By the process of elimination, I tracked it down to my telephone line. My phone was dead – no dial tone – all three of them.

The telephone is a wonderful thing; it lets you stay in touch with the whole world. We take it for granted these days, until it ceases to work.

I dutifully followed the checklist in the phone book and everything checked out, but still no dial tone.

In utter frustration, I called the number for phone repairs in the front of the telephone book. After five minutes of yet more frustration, answering questions like: “If you want to sign up for a new service, press one; if you want to check on your billing, press two; and if you want repairs, press three.” I wanted repairs and that’s the number I dialed. Why do I have to go through all this rigmarole to get to talk with a human being? Even when I talked with the woman, she didn’t know what to tell me. “Just wait for the repairman,”she said, “he will call you.” No mention of when he would arrive, so I had to wait for a repairman to root out the problem before I could get back to work.

In the meantime, I checked with my daughter to see if her phone was working, thinking a line might be under repair. Her phone line was dead as well, but my granddaughter’s line was working and it’s in the same house. That was confusing.

Do you know how exasperating this can be? Malfunctioning inanimate objects drive me up the wall. There are times when I want to pick it up and throw it through the window. Now, that’s a stupid thing to even think about. I would be cutting off my nose to spite my face, as they say. But, nevertheless, that’s how I felt this morning.

I told myself, “Calm down, Betty, your blood pressure will rise out of site.” I calmed myself down and used my cell phone (another great piece of electronics) for my calls, including the one to the repairman.

About six hours later, the repairman called to say that someone had severed a line. It turned out that while they were mowing the weeds off the ditch-bank this morning, they cut the phone line to both our houses.

Well, the problem is solved, for this time. I am back in business and I have 30 e-mails to answer today, plus my column to send to the newspaper. Yes, I e-mail my columns to the paper on this electronic marvel, my laptop.

It’s strange how all the electronic equipment we take for granted, in our work-a-day world, can come to a halt in a nanosecond by some unknown source. In this great electronic world of ours, the wheels of progress can still grind to a halt, with a simple thing like a lawn mower.

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Betty Kuhn of Boardman may be reached at bkuhn_1@msn.com.