Power Outage

It was Thursday, just before 11PM, when the electric power went off and the house went dark. Nuria and I had been watching a movie when the TV screen went dark and the lights went off. After a few minutes I phoned the electric company and reported the outage. Some of the houses on the other side of the street had their porch lights on, so it was my side of the street that was without electricity. Nuria and I went to bed. 

Friday—early morning. When we got up, we were still without power. The time was 7AM. Nuria walked to McDonalds and got coffee for herself. She has to have coffee in the morning or her head will explode. Or something similarly terrible. Later she drove to Walmart and bought a sub sandwich for each of us

The power came back on at noon. The refrigerator started running, but it had been warming for 13 hours so I didn't want to warm it further by opening the door, so I let it run for a while.

I have a new neighbor next door; he just moved in. So I decided to walk over and meet him. It was a sunny morning, and I climbed the steps to his front porch and knocked on his door. After a few seconds, the door opened. I introduced myself. He was a young man, mid-20s, who spoke with a slight accent. He said he was from Brazil. I told him that I had come over to see who my new neighbor was. He was holding a paint roller, and I didn't want to interrupt his work too long, so I cut the visit short. I told him not to let the electricity outage worry him, because they rarely happen. It's a "once in a blue moon" kind of event, I said. Then I came back home.

Nuria and I ate a late brunch, and went on with our day.

Saturday—early morning—arrived. The electricity went off again, around 4:30AM, thus making a liar out of me. Nuria walked to McDonald's around 7AM and bought sausage McMuffins for our breakfast and hot coffee for herself. Our electricity came back on about 10AM.

This isn't the first power outage that the neighborhood has had, but usually they occur after a hurricane or a bad storm, when a falling limb or a falling tree brings down power lines. This time there was no storm, no strong wind. Just sudden darkness. It reminded me of death—light, then sudden darkness. Perhaps my death will come for me that way. Then, reincarnation will be when the power comes back on. 

Oh, don't tell me you didn't see some kind of twist coming at the end of this post.

Now it's Sunday afternoon, 4:30PM. The tornado siren across the street sounds. Ten minutes later the sky grows dark, the wind blows hard, and the rain comes down hard. It's a gully washer. 

At 4:40PM, the electricity goes off.