Tonight, in the middle of cooking pasta, our power went out. There was no storm, no major wind event that could’ve foretold the outage, but our side of the street was in the dark.
I was immediately thankful for a gas stove. We dug the old camping lantern out of the shop and lit a few candles. Dinner was served by candlelight, which was nice … but I never knew how quiet our house could be, minus the tv, radio, or even the low hum of the air conditioner or electric appliances. And what would we do after dinner? Sunday is one of our favorite TV nights.
It made me wonder what life would’ve been like pre-electricity. Pretty dark, I imagine. I felt like sitting by a fire and knitting.
Mercifully, as I was putting away dinner dishes by lantern light, the power came back on. It was life back to normal. But still, it’s crazy how dependent we become on our “things.” It’s probably a bad sign that it was scary to anticipate a night of doing nothing. No wonder so many Americans have ADD.