Unplugged Summer

The ethernet cable dangled from my wall like a dead snake, and honestly? I felt like a zombie. Fourteen hours of scrolling TikTok, watching streamers live their best lives while I sat in my basement letting June slip away. My best friend Kai kept texting me about how I was literally ghosting everything, and he wasn't wrong.

"Bro, you need to touch grass," was his exact wording.

So when my mom disconnected the cable box because why pay $200 monthly when everything's on streaming anyway (we're too broke for all the subscriptions), I figured that was my sign. The universe—or at least my mom's budget cuts—was telling me something.

I ended up at this rec center where Kai and his new girlfriend Maya were playing padel. I'd never even heard of it—it's like tennis but with these weird short racquets and a glass court. Maya was absolutely crushing it, and Kai was trying so hard to look cool while completely whiffing serves. The way they moved together, laughing every time someone messed up, made something twist in my chest.

"You playing or just lurking like a creeper?" Maya called out, grinning.

"I don't know how," I admitted, feeling my face heat up.

"C'mere, I'll teach you."

An hour later, I was sweating through my shirt, my arm was dead, and I'd never felt more alive in my entire life. Every time I connected with the ball, sending it ricocheting off the back wall, I felt something shift inside me. The zombie fog lifted. The constant need to check my phone, the FOMO, the pressure to curate everything—it all just faded.

That night, I stared at the empty cable outlet on my wall. Instead of searching for an ethernet cable to reconnect, I texted Kai: "Padel tomorrow?"

"Bet."

Sometimes unplugging is the only way to actually connect.