Odd O'blography

Xfinity and Beyond

My wife woke me just after midnight on a Tuesday. No, it was actually Wednesday morning. My brain is always a bit foggy on one hour of sleep.

"There's something going on in the yard!"

"Wait, what?"

I was half asleep, but I had a vague sense of a low, rumbling roar jumbled up with some high-pitched beeps.

Was that real or just fragments of a dream?

The bright light seeping in around the blackout shade on our bedroom window was real enough. That window provides a pleasant view of a small hillside greenbelt. There shouldn't be a light out there.

What the hell? Where is that light coming from? Is this an alien abduction?!


Two weeks earlier:

The TV weather guys called our big Tuesday night storm a bomb cyclone. A huge, spinning vortex that flanked the usual weather pattern and made a sneak attack from the east. Our trees are all braced to resist the prevailing westerlies. They were taken by surprise from behind and four of them fell victim to the slashing wind and driving rain. One took out a power pole as it crashed through the front yard and into the street. On Wednesday morning, our yard really did look like a bomb had exploded.

The power pole took our cable TV and internet connection with it when it fell. The main wire was still attached to the pole, and even though it was lying in the street, our neighbors were still online. I tried to report an outage using the Xfinity app on my cellphone, but the app didn't believe me. It assured me that there was no outage in my area and suggested that I restart my router. I doubted that turning the router off and on would fix the problem, but their app wouldn't let me explain that the real issue was a broken wire. Eventually, I gave up and put some more wood in the fireplace. Staying warm was more important and I could still get internet on my phone.

I knew that our cable wouldn't be repaired until the power company replaced their pole, so I waited a few days before calling the local Xfinity store. I navigated the phone menu to a real person and described the situation outside. The representative was friendly enough, but her script didn't include a wire on the ground. She suggested that I restart my router, but I declined. It took thirty-five minutes to confirm my identity, assign a ticket number and schedule a service appointment. And I had to understand that the storm had impacted service in my area so the tech wouldn't get there until next week. While I waited, Xfinity sent several helpful texts to inform me that service had been restored in my area, and I should try restarting my router. Yeah, thanks for that.

An Xfinity van made its way up the street the following Tuesday. It drove over their wire and pulled into our driveway. The power was back on by then, so the tech rang the doorbell and introduced himself. He gave me an apologetic smile and told me that the real problem was that the wire to my house was broken. I had to agree that he'd nailed the diagnosis. He went on to say that a different crew would have to come out to rehang the cable line on the power pole. I wasn't surprised. The tech did, however, run an orange wire to temporarily connect our house to the cable line that was still lying in the street. I thanked him with genuine gratitude, and he went on his way. And, of course, once the cable line was reconnected to the house, the router restarted by itself.


Back to the present:

Fully awake, my mind cleared a bit, and I nervously raised the bedroom shade to check out our back yard. It was fully illuminated in brilliant white light. The rumbling roar of an engine was still clearly audible. That hadn't been a dream at all. The reverberating noise and the angle of the shadows in the yard made it obvious that the light was actually coming from the front of the house. I made my way to a front window and cautiously peeked through the curtain. There was an Xfinity boom truck backed up to the power pole and they had a zillion-watt work light mounted above the guy in the bucket. It was more than high enough to shine over our roof and into the back yard.

For a moment, this 'working in the dark of night' scene looked like an X-Files episode. Then it all became clear. The rumbling truck engine was running to provide power to the boom and the work light. And the beeps that had penetrated my dream were from the truck backing up to the pole. I don't why they chose to rehang the cable line at midnight with no warning for us homeowners. I was just glad that it wasn't a UFO. After my experience with Xfinity, I was in no mood to be probed. Again.



Author's note: ▼

My wife is annoyed with me. Again. She's very literal-minded and it bugs her when I embellish a story to make it more fun. I keep telling her that's what writers do. But, in the interest of full transparency, Here's the real story of that fateful Wednesday morning.

Debbie fell asleep while we were watching the 11:00 news. I shut the TV off at 11:30 and settled down myself. As I was drifting off, I heard the beep, beep, beep of a truck backing up. That was unusual, but I didn't want to wake Deb, so I didn't get up to look. I woke up when Deb got out of bed at midnight, but I thought she was just going to the bathroom. She took so long that I asked her what was wrong.

“The Xfinity nitwits are out front, working on the cable line. In the middle of the night! Their work light is blinding, it looks like the mothership is hovering over the house.”

I thought that was a pretty good joke, so I put the alien abduction theme into my Xfinity and Beyond story. And the work light really did illuminate the back yard. I could see the brightness around the edges of our bedroom window shade. But I was cozy and warm under the blankets. Everything had been explained to my satisfaction, and the truth is that I never actually got out of bed. But that's not nearly as interesting, is it?