Electric Habits

The power of ... power

Diary of the Late Republic, #10

It was 1:34 a.m. when our annoying home alarm system beeped to indicate we had lost power. This wasn’t too surprising; I had registered the windiness outside before I drifted off to sleep about three hours earlier. When it became apparent that power would not be returning momentarily (as it sometimes does), I used my phone to notify the regional electric utility company.

When I awakened again four hours later, the power was still out. I could see that there were lights on the main thoroughfare running by my house, and across the street, but not in the homes immediately adjacent to mine. But that could be coincidental. I went to check on the status of my report, only to learn that the electric company indicated they had never seen one from me. Nor did the outage map indicate there was was an outage in my neighborhood. On the other hand, the local cable company texted me that it was aware of a service problem nearby. Conflicting evidence. So I filed another report and then called the company. I was told that my earlier report was listed as “closed out”—there wasn’t a problem. But a crew would be coming by. I headed off to work uneasily, hoping the problem would resolve itself.

A few hours I checked online again. Once more, nothing on the map, and no record of my earlier filings. I called again. I was once again told the report had been closed out—if the power didn’t return, I’d need an electrician. But she suggested I turn the master switch for my power off and then on again. I’d done that, but I asked my son, who had just headed off to work himself, to go back and try again. He did. Nothing.

I found myself in a strangely isolated position. When it came to this kind of thing, I always assumed safety in numbers, and now I was on my own with no clear path forward. I didn’t have an electrician, and initial efforts to ask around were unavailing. I wandered around online, looking for someone small and local. Unanswered phones. We live in such a densely interconnected world in so many ways, but when you get off track, you can find yourself lost pretty quickly.

Anyway, I did get an electrician on the phone, and was able to schedule a visit for later that day. It was going to cost $350 the second he crossed my driveway, and who knows what would happen once he did. But the countervailing urgency—hot water, heat, laundry, wifi, and laptop charging, not to mention defeating darkness—overrode that anxiety. I knew family members would experience the pinch even more acutely than I did. I had enough good sense to know this was no real emergency. But that didn’t stop me from treating it like one.

I raced home early from work to arrive in time for the scheduled window for the electrician. As I pulled up to the house, I noticed that the doorway light was on. Huh. (Huh!) I stepped inside and flicked a switch: Light! The stove, television, thermostat: Working. I canceled the electrician (not entirely sure if I was on the hook for that $350 or not, which I thought of as a small price to pay under the circumstances). As suddenly as it appeared, my problem evaporated. I’ve savored the experience of devices that work for the rest of the day and—intermittently—since. After a certain point, though, appreciating normalcy can shade into anxious anticipation of the moment it will disappear. There’s a little too much of that in my life already.

We are all such creatures of habit. Some of us more than others, for sure. But more of us increasingly as we age. There’s nothing like a pilot light to hold off dread and despair. And alarm clocks that tell us to get to work.