Lights Out!

There was a brown-out in our neighborhood this evening. It came at a time when our day was beginning to wind down. It was raining, and the streets glistened in the half-light of the dimmed sodium vapor bulbs up above. When cars drove by, headlights provided an almost blinding flash. Inside, we breathed a sigh of relief for having switched all of our fixtures to florescent bulbs. We were still able to generate a hazy twilight in our living room.
But it wasn’t the lack of light that struck me. It was the quiet. Without the hum of a dozen or more small appliances droning away in the background, the only sounds were intimate or distant: snoring dog, ticking clock, jet plane, freight train. We busied ourselves with candles and flashlights, but mostly we resigned ourselves to waiting out the storm. In my mind I pictured mobile news teams setting up remotes across the street, giving on the spot coverage of “Brown Out 2007”.
The unique irony for us was that the night before we had been at a meeting at my son’s school, discussing plans for disaster. What would we do in the event of an earthquake or fire? How would we respond to any sort of random cataclysmic event? When the lights went out, we became anxious, then frustrated, and finally resigned. We expected relief at any time. Then hours passed, and we comforted each other with the notion that it was only electricity that we were missing. That and Thursday night TV. What a cruel fate. Being bored by candlelight is so much more fun. Sheesh.