Don’t Be Afraid of The Dark

Image by erjkprunczyk via Flickr

When the AARP membership letter arrived, I put it in a pile of misdirected mail and prepared to walk it over to my next door neighbor, Charlie. Imagine my elation and surprise when I discovered that it was addressed to me. Apparently, I had joined a new demographic.

I had uncerimoniously turned 50 in September and was hoping to sneak by this dubious headstone like a kid whistling through the graveyard. I had zero interest in celebrating the autumn solstice of my life with a room full of fellow survivors.  I informed my loving wife that a quiet, more personal commemoration might be appropriate – perhaps a new sports car or a trip to Europe. This seemed infinitely preferable to ripping the seat of my pants while trying to do the worm on the dance floor at a 50th birthday fete.

I was now entering October country – - that shadowy meridian that separates the last sighs of September’s Indian Summer of youth and the cooler, denuded November twilight of mature life. It’s in the autumn of our days that the unexpected tends to happen; and sometimes, when you least expect it, you get sideswiped by Life and it it sucks. There are those days when you really just want to be ten years old again with your greatest concern being what you will wear for Halloween.  I had to come to grips with the fact that it was 2011, not 1971. The future was no longer a horizon line road that seemed to carry on forever. 50 was beginning to feel like a truck with bad brakes.

Perhaps my negativity created a karmic low pressure system or I may have offended St Propanus, the patron Saint of generators, because no sooner had I begun to wallow in self pity that the Great Nor’easter of October 30th hit.   I was just two days into being Mr. Mom having been left behind by my highly organized Captain who had slipped out of the country to visit our daughter who was studying abroad.  The remaining crew was a pathetic ship of fools – the hapless husband, two determined teenage boys, a bulimic Australian Shepherd and a demonic house cat that was now using her urine as a warped form of foreign policy.

When the electricity died Saturday afternoon, I initially smiled as the reassuring switches and subsequent thrum of the back-up generator restored my power. I was the resourceful ant who had elected to invest in the future while elsewhere, feckless grasshoppers were being berated by their partners for being too cheap or too New England-proud to make provisions for the potential for electrical outages. I admit that the purchase of the generator was a no brainer. My home lacks a certain charm when there is no running water, heat, phone, wi-fi or ESPN. It quickly becomes a giant port-o-potty.

As a native Californian, the cost and logistics of burying a 1000 gallon propane tank in my garden did not sit well with me. Before moving to New England from California, the biggest propane tank I had seen was on a Coleman camping stove — and that damn thing lasted for a year. Surely a 120 gallon tank of propane could run my house for a month. I would later learn that 120 gallons of propane can power a 100 watt lamp and an electric clock for about one day.  Introduce teenage electrical thieves that steal heat while you are freezing, play XBox while you are blacked out, microwave while you are drinking iced coffee and cap it off with a twenty minute hot shower — and you have a recipe for rapid power failure.

As the propane tank slowly drained of its life force, the service company informed me that they could not make it to my house for several days – ensuring that I was now going to run out of power. Apparently, they were also running out of power. This led me to the draconian decision to announce to the boys that we were going to ration our electricity. My energy conservation plan was not well received by the natives. Truth be told, it bugged me. We had bought the generator so we would not have to sit in the dark. Yet, here we were sitting in the dark trying to conserve energy. It felt like the ever perplexing paradox of having to clean the house before the cleaning people arrive.

The dishes piled up. The toilets remained unflushed. By day three, we avoided the laundry room as there was something living inside the five foot pile of dirty clothes. The cat disappeared and I feared the highly fragrant laundry mass had devoured her. For meals, I resorted to my Mad Lib bachelor recipes: grilled cheese on top of (you add the plural noun). When we ran out of milk, I suggested to the boys that they use the left over diet coke on their breakfast cereal.

“It tastes good. I ate Corn Flakes with Tab all the time in college.”

The dog kept whimpering trying to convey to me that I was obligated to take him on his daily 5 mile run. I just whimpered back at him. The cat retaliated for my neglect of litter box by peeing on the floor. I slipped in it. I thought about peeing on her but she was too quick. Meanwhile, the propane gauge fell like a barometer. We were down to 5%.

School was cancelled which required me to work from home. Working from home is overrated for executives. One tends to lose credibility on business calls when dogs and teens are screaming in the background. With the propane dying, I had to decide whether to eat my children or ship them off to friends who offered to host them while I presided over the death of my generator. Since they are not properly tenderized, I elected the latter and returned home. The propane was now down to 2%.

Like a lone survivor with a single bullet in the chamber of his gun, I was not sure whether I wanted to use the final wisps of energy to watch ESPN or clean world’s most disgusting load of dirty dishes. I went for the dishes. I turned off all the lights, sat in the darkness and ran the dishwasher — the only light on in my property was the tiny red dial indicating the status of the wash cycle.  I sat wondering when the boils and lice would arrive. Outside, there was an odd heaving and mechanical gasping as the generator breathed its final carbon monoxide emission.

I sat in ebony self pity.  I got up to add a log to the fire when I suddenly noticed a light flicker at Charlie’s house. I heard the distant clicking of a computer printer resetting in the den. I cautiously approached the light switch and click, glorious light poured down from the blackened recesses of the heavens. Power had been restored. I admit to waiting until the next afternoon (I’m no dummy), to pick up the boys only to be informed by our friends that one of them may have been exposed to head lice. Yes, Job there is a Santa Claus. The parasites had indeed finally arrived. One radioactive shampoo, two pick-ups and a reassuring Zumbach’s coffee later, our family was reunited.

I relaxed for the first time in days. The phone rang. My Optimum cable which has been as reliable as a blind man in a bar fight had come back to life. The TV flickered. There it was — ESPN. A toilet flushed. There was a cheer and then just as quickly, the lights went out. I moaned and turned around –only to see my teenage son smiling as he flipped back on the light switch.

“Just messing with you, Dad.” He grinned.