You probably think I'm overreacting, but first of all: fuck you. Second of all, I'm not overreacting. I missed Big Brother. Mmmmmkay??! I MISSED BIG BROTHER. I had to actually TALK to my parents instead of engaging in my usual nightly routine of shutting myself in my room and watching hours of reality television while stuffing my face with corn chips and bemoaning my lot in life.
There was a split second right after the power went out (just after I blew out the candles) when I thought, it's just gonna come right back on. Now. NOW. NOW. NOW. And then, still nothing. My heart sank as the sickening realization hit me--we were possibly going to be without power for the ENTIRE episode of Big Brother. My mom pretty much immediately piped up with "Well, I just don't understand this. I just DON'T understand it. I'll tell you what, I don't get it." And then my dad, not one to resist an opportunity to play on my fears, chimed in with, "You know, sometimes people are without power for WEEKS. It happens. Yes. Yes, in a big storm! Weeks, sometimes."
Me: "I have NEVER heard of people being out of power for weeks."
My dad: "Oh yes, it happens. You hear on the news--100,000 without power. And then the next week you hear--50,000 STILL without power."
Me: "You DON'T watch the news."
My dad: "Yes! I have it on in the background."
Me: "No, Dad."
My dad: "Yes."
My mom: "Well, I'll tell you what, I just don't understand what's going on here. I just don't get this. I don't get it."
We live above a bar that we own and our living room windows look down on the outdoor patio area, where on warm summer nights people congregate to drink and carouse. On a night when our TV is on (every night), the chatter of the customers below us fades easily into the background, like the buzzing of a fly or the impatient grunts of a hungry warthog. Unless there's a brutal knife fight happening, but that's rare. On a night when NONE of our gadgets are working due to an inexplicable power outage ON MY BIRTHDAY, the chatter of the customers below us rises like the suffocating heat that we can no longer combat with air conditioning and we begin to hear things we'd rather not, like how so-and-so's power has been out since 2 pm and how someone-or-other heard from a COP that the power might be out for SEVERAL DAYS.
And thus began the screaming of the lambs in my head. My dad went downstairs to do damage control. My birthday Chinese food was rotting in the fridge, and that was tragic enough, but a loss of power for long enough could mean thousands of dollars in spoiled food for our business, and that's whack. My mom was already asleep on the couch, having accepted her fate.
When I went downstairs to check on my dad about an hour later, I found him standing near the entrance to the bar, in the eerie pitch blackness, smoking a cigarette and holding a very large butcher knife.
"I've got a big butcher knife," he said.
I laughed. "Why??!"
"Because of the looters!" He exclaimed.
"Looters, what looters?!"
"When there are no lights and the alarm systems are off, the looters come out. Who's to stop them?!"
I shined my flashlight into the empty black night.
"Stop that!" he said. "They'll see us!"
"Who, the mole people?"
"Whoever! All I know is, when I was inside the bar, I put my face up against the front window and that's when I realized there was someone RIGHT THERE on the other side staring back at me."
"So you grabbed a huge knife?"
"Would you prefer I be weaponless?"
Just then a cop car drove by and stopped across the street and down a ways from where we were standing, illuminating a large group of shirtless townie weirdos.
My dad turned to me, "Wouldn't it be crazy if they all started attacking and eating that cop?"
I said, "Wouldn't it be creepy if this was happening on Halloween or Devil's night?"
My mom, having awakened, had walked to the window and was listening in on our conversation from our apartment above. She called down to us, "I'll tell you what, I just don't get it! I don't understand this."
Neither do I, mom. Neither do I.
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