For some reason, I wake out of a sound sleep and hear ... nothing. Usually I can hear clocks ticking, the fan whirring. Even the train isn't passing through. I know I'm awake because I am uncomfortably aware of a major hot flash wracking my body, hence why I am desperate for the fan that is no longer blowing through the room.I open my eyes, blink, and open them again. The room is completely pitch black. There isn't a glimmer of light filtering through from anywhere, not even outside. The sky is overcast, and no moon, if there even is one tonight, is shining through. Or, I am blind.
This same eerie black-out happened last year about this same time right down to the hour it occurred. Luckily, I am a planner, and there is a small flashlight next to my bed. I fumble around for my glasses and my phone, finally seeing it is 3:35 a.m. and the house has no power.
I turn on the emergency flashlight that I keep in the hallway. It's for emergencies only because the batteries are dying in it. I head downstairs and look across the street at the industrial park and see that their emergency lights are on but that there are no lights coming from any of the windows. The rest of my street and the one connecting to it are completely in the dark, as am I.
Being an idiot, I turn on my laptop. This is a great idea because it has a battery, right? Except the internet access needs power, and I don't have any power. I decide to contact the electric company using my new, semi-useful cell phone, but I cannot remember the name of the company to whom I send my monthly electric bill payments. Back upstairs I go and fumble around some more until I find my checkbook register, which is really just some random notebook or scrap of paper because I have not actually balanced my checkbook in about ten years.
Oh, yes. National Grid. Those bastards.
The website tells me that there are four outages in my area affecting 171 customers. Right. It's probably more along the lines of 10,071 customers, but they're not texting National Grid at 4 a.m. because THEY'RE FUCKING SLEEPING.
After reporting my outage, I try to go back to bed but it's too damn hot and I am too damn aggravated, so I just get up. It takes me almost ten minutes to dig up the candles and get six small and four tapers lit. Of course, in the dark I knock over a set of screwdrivers and start swearing ... quietly ... because there are other people in the house. I try to get myself ready for the day but cannot make lunches by candlelight, plus I'm trying to wait as long as I can to open the fridge.
At this point I notice that my hair looks kind of like a 1960's beehive bubble-headed Barbie's hair, and, because I cannot plug in a straightener, I will have to go to school like this. And make-up? By candlelight? Hello, Clown-face. I'll end up looking like Caitlin Jenner.
Finally, at 5:45, the power is restored. I quickly plug in my phone (which had low battery to start with), my hair straightener, and open the fridge to get sandwich meat out. The rest of the house wakes up, completely oblivious to the Great and Miraculous Night of the Damn Dark or to the fact that I am punchy from four hours of sleep. I feel sorry for my students: I'm going to be in a foul mood all day. To make everything worse, it stays overcast and grayish-dark all damn day, like I'm living in the dark and then the shadows. Yup, I'll be Plato today.
Damn you, National Grid.
On the way home from work, there is a National Grid truck down the street from my house. If I don't have power, I'll be tempted to strut down the road and kick that National Grid guy's ass into next Tuesday. I might do it anyway just because I couldn't sleep during the night... because the fan went off ... because the power went off ... Yeah. I think I'll kick his ass, but I might take a nap first.
