A funny thing happened today: it rained. Water. From the sky. No really!
On Tuesday and Thursday mornings I have a running and jogging class so I woke up a few minutes beforehand to put on some gym shorts and shoes and I walked down to the athletic center on campus. It was sprinkling a little bit but we ran outside regardless. It was actually rather refreshing. Shortly after taking my shower the power went out for about thirty seconds. No big deal. I went about the rest of my day doing what I normally would do: class, homework, food, et cetera.
Mid-afternoon rolled around and it was still raining on and off, and generally just wet and depressing. Fine, I was in a pretty good mood today and it the weather hadn’t really effected me at all. I knew it was going to get worse, but I was rather looking forward to a big storm.
At 3.17 PM (according to the email timestamp), the Area Coordinator of my dorm (whom I spoke of in Bad for the eyes, but good for something) sent a message out saying that due to issues caused by the morning power outage, the campus power would need to be shut off for anywhere from twenty minutes, to two hours. She didn’t know when it would happen.
Fine. I can deal with that. I was doing laundry at the time and I decided not to put the rest of it in, just in case the power went out while my clothes were still in either the washing machine or the dryer. I saved all of my documents on my computer, shut it down and unplugged it just to be on the safe side. I wasn’t too worried, but I want this computer to last for as long as possible. I settled in to do some reading.
At about five o’clock this evening I went downstairs with my roommate, Rossko, to get my laundry out of the dryer and put his in. We were walking out of the laundry room when the lights went out and every electrical device powered down. I’ll admit, I rather enjoy that sound. Or rather, the lack of sound. And now I’m getting to the meat of this post (I know, I’m longwinded).
As I said, it was about five o’clock when the power went out, and just getting to be the dinner hour. The rain had started to come down much harder and I still had some reading to do. So I folded my laundry and read for awhile before Rossko and I decided to head over to our student commons to see if the Caf was open. We didn’t have much hope that it would be. We were right.
What we found was confusion and chaos. It was rather disgusting. There were hundreds, literally, hundreds of students milling about waiting for the power to come back on and allow any of the three food service places in our student commons to open back up. All I could do was laugh. People were on phones frantically calling people (and, in many cases, texting in between the calls - also, I hate that the word “text” is now a verb) to let them know not to come to the Caf, “for God’s sake, find food somewhere else!” We called to order a pizza because, well, we were hungry. There was a one to two hour wait. We decided to walk down to our friend’s car and head into town to get some food as we all had things to do and couldn’t sit around waiting to eat. That was an adventure in and of itself, but that's not the point.
That half an hour or so in the student commons reiterated to me just how naïve many of the people on my campus have been their entire lives. They had no idea how to react to the sudden lack of things that have always been there for them. Things like food and electricity that really aren’t accessible in other countries. I began walking up to people and telling them things like “This is what the apocalypse will be like,” and, “You know, in other countries this is reality.”
I know that I am just as guilty of taking for granted things like food, shelter, electricity, et cetera, but I’d like to think that I handled this situation with grace. I settled in to do things that required no electricity and was prepared to be outside in the, gasp, rain. Sure, I was a little inconvenienced, but the hundreds of students in our commons were completely lost. I’m still not sure whether this is funny or heartbreakingly depressing.
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Last year, all the power on my campus went out during a late winter ice storm. It was around ... seven at night? I was getting ready for a theatre performance, and all the lights cut.
That sound of everything powering down? Sacred.
We still had the show, but by candlelight.
Later that night, I was walking across campus, and the power to the whole city and half the county was out. The only lights came from the hospital next door, which runs its own emergency generator.
I got back to my dorm and climbed five flights (halfway to my ninth floor room). There were occasional emergency lights in the stairwells, and one light on each floor. People clustered around them like campfires, playing guitars, reading, talking, dealing card games. Though candles are "illegal" on campus, the halls were suddenly filled with that soft glow, and authority figures pretended not to notice.
There was the feeling in the air of thrilled and quiet and laughing exhilaration. My friend Dave pointed out later that it felt like a middle school sleepover. All excitement and the edge of dangerous disorder.
There were rumors that the power would be out until Monday (it was a Saturday), and I was disappointed to hear, around 1:00am, while lying in bed, the power come back on. I heard cheers through the walls and floor, but I remember thinking that I could have gone a few more days of this.
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