Outage means updating Facebook by candlelight
When today's suburban parents were kids, a day without electricity was more adventure than catastrophe.
Refrigerators didn't seem as full a generation ago. People ate whatever was thawing in the freezer and used the power outage as the impetus to defrost and clean. The worst consequence of a power outage in the 1970s was the lack of TV for kids who would be forced to miss out on a double-entendre from Charles Nelson Reilly that cracked up Gene Rayburn on “Match Game.”
A power outage caused by a nasty storm didn't pull the plug on fun for kids a generation or two ago. A day without electricity didn't stop anyone from communicating with friends. In fact, unable to watch TV, kids often stumbled into the outside world where they were far more likely to communicate with peers. Even at night, the need for flashlights and candles added an air of fun to an otherwise boring bedtime. Reading a Mad Magazine by flashlight made a kid feel as if he were Abraham Lincoln.
But for the more than 800,000 households and businesses that lost electricity after Monday's storm, the loss of power basically ended the world as they knew it.
Electricity is the reason many suburbanites get out of bed each morning. While cellphone alarms and neighborhood roosters can do the trick, many suburbanites rely on electric alarm clocks to rouse us from the night's slumber. Then we require coffee to actually drag us into full consciousness. Most coffee makers depend on electricity. A breakfast that requires toasters, toaster ovens or microwaves is short-circuited by a power outage. Even the gas oven and burners function with an electric starter. In some areas of suburbia with wells and septic tanks, electricity is what pumps the water to showers and toilets. Others have forgotten how to brush their teeth in a world without electricity.
So legions of late, caffeine-deprived, hungry and dirty suburbanites fumble with keys in a dark garage before it dawns on them that the garage door opener doesn't work without electricity to power the motor. Once free and on their commutes to work, they drive around downed limbs to arrive at an intersection where the traffic signals are dark. They know this means everyone must come to a complete stop and politely take turns to drive through the intersection. But the reality is that a traffic signal without electricity is a sign to act out scenes from “Lord of the Flies.” Civilization comes to a screeching (and in some cases crashing) stop as some people selfishly ignore the blaring horns to boldly follow the cars in front of them. Meanwhile, the Piggys of suburbia (probably on their way home to play board games with the kids by candlelight) meekly sit in the left-turn lane waiting in vain for the kindness of strangers.
Unless you work as a blacksmith, the place where you work probably shuts down without electricity as well. Cash registers won't open. Computers won't compute. Phones won't ring. Email is down. Outside of walking up to someone and talking, office-workers have no means to communicate.
Homebound kids devastated to discover the cable is out go into a full-fledged panic when they realize the DVD and Xbox don't work without electricity.
In the old days when suburbanites were farmers, a toppled windmill might have meant people would have to carry buckets of water to their animals. But if you are playing FarmVille with your Facebook buddies and the power goes out, that baby lamb is just going to have to go without nourishment until the power comes back on.
You want to complain on Facebook about the lack of air-conditioning, but your smartphone is out of juice. If your phone is dying without its plug-in charger, you must ration your text use, doling out power-zapping text messages only to those worthy. You don't want to drain your power calling ComEd every five minutes for service updates when you need to save enough power to text your last location to friends before your battery dies.
Deprived of electricity, we can't eat, amuse ourselves or communicate. In our apocalyptic world without power, many of us retreat to our four-wheeled, gasoline-powered oases where we can listen to music, charge our cellphones and maybe even drive to someplace that has electricity (provided we figured out how to get the garage door open).
But use that resource carefully. Gas pumps don't work without electricity.