Ice Pod
When the lights go out, the heaters grind to a halt and everyone wanders out of their houses to see if their neighbors also just waved goodbye to their modern, technology-enabled comfort, it always delivers a real gut check as I’m forced to assess my bionic life.
On Monday morning when the ice storm hit, I awoke on my own steam at dawn, mainly because the digital alarm clock set on KRXO’s “Bob and Tom Show” for maximum, chucklehead irritation was dead. Based on the air temperature, we probably lost power two hours before, and the cold was starting to overtake the warmth. There would be no coffee, no CNN, no checking of e-mail, no DVR-delivered episodes of “Little Einsteins” for my son, and no podcast updates for the ride to work.
Later that day, we arrived at my in-laws’ house in far northwest Oklahoma City and started to enjoy all the comforts of home circa 2007. I programmed my father-in-law’s TiVo to record “How I Met Your Mother” and “Journeyman,” and settled in for something akin to normal life that night, reading to my son and getting him ready for bed.
Then around 8:30 p.m., everything whirred to a stop — we could hear the modern world running down around us. Then there was that awful micro-moment of hope so commonly experienced in blackouts when the electricity makes a last valiant effort to return and the lights pop back on. But then that hope abates as the grid goes down and you can almost feel the power failure digging in for the long haul.
Now, this should normally be the moment where I have some kind of sky-opening epiphany over how I’m far too media-saturated and technology-enabled. From here, I am supposed to transform into a neo-Waldenite like Bill McKibben, author of “The Age of Missing Information,” and embrace the natural, freezing life experienced by my pioneer ancestors. My energy footprint becomes the size of a chipmunk’s (real, not singing and computer-generated) as I crush my cell phone under the heel of my hiking boot and warm my family by burning my entertainment center.
That’s not how it works here. This week of ice-encasement and unreliable modernity leaves me literally cold, like Jack Nicholson at the end of “The Shining.” I keep pining for the phone, the broadband connection, the TiVo and everything else that went away on Monday and has yet to come back — somewhere, George Daniel Lang I, a courageous man who settled the Cherokee Strip in 1893, is scowling at his disgustingly powerless descendent. And still, we somehow harnessed those last few implements that could give us sight.My father-in-law located a flashlight, but it would need fresh batteries. I recited “Green Eggs and Ham” to my son by memory and tucked him in, and then my wife and I grabbed our cell phones and held them aloft as if we were at the Led Zeppelin reunion concert during “Kashmir,” giving us barely more glow than a lightning bug.
Suddenly, I had an epiphany. I found a trusted electronic friend in my pocket, and when I pressed the “menu” button, a bold and bright light came pouring out of its two-inch screen. I found the “artist” category and just started moving the click wheel from A.C. Newman to Zero 7 and back as Laura and I washed our faces, brushed our teeth and fell into bed without injuring ourselves on anything sharp, dark and unseen.
We were safe. And by the light of the iPod, we found our way through the darkness.
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I usually guide myself to bed by the light of the ipod every night, after every light in the house has turned out. Those babies put out some light!