ONE OF LIFE'S MANY SURPRISES

Having had a busy late afternoon, with 97 degrees outside and a dry 82 degrees in the house, I had plunked myself in a comfy living room chair facing the TV, looking forward for the first time in the day to watching a bit of world news. It was after 8 PM but there was still a bit of light in the sky when, with a bit of pop and squeak, the TV went off and lights, computer, house fan and everything that ran on electricity along with it.

I pulled the AC plug out of the backof the computer that had been on, should there be a sudden surge at some point (though I have a perfectly adequate surge protector connected) and went into my mental self-lecture of better-to-be-cautious-than-careless, counting on things with moving parts that often let me down. Back to the living room, the phone rang. It was a neighbor checking to see if the lights were out at her house or the entire street. That answered, I tried to return some calls, forgetting that my wireless phones wouldn't work. I finally checked my cell, made my calls, received a call on my land line which still worked, then hunted down candles to light. Is it possible to have too many candles around for just such occasions?

The silence was deafening. With the aid of flashlights (thank goodness for my addiction, buying them when I see them as I see them in checking out) lines, I found my old, tiny, AM/FM radio that had been unused for more than eight years. I checked the batteries (2 AAA) and they had not burst. I turned the radio on and it worked. The sound was quite unfamiliar though I was able to find NPR totally boring at that time, so 'off' went the radio.

Across the street the house was ablaze with lights. My neighbor has a generator! Yellow lights flickered off anything that reflected and I saw that the handy NSTAR truck/cherry picker was working on the transformer down the street. Getting ready for bed in the dark was little problem but reading myself to sleep was one. Using one of those 'never die shake-and-it-will-light flashlights I was able to finish the last few pages on my book and start another just as the pops and squeaks came back and the house lit up again. My bedside clock complained that I needed to set the time, which I did, following the verbal instructions which miraculously worked for the first time...to 11:11 PM and rushed to another room to put the TV on for Jon Stewart.

Happy ending though it was, as I watched the burning plane on Al-Jazeera and thought, "I"m not sorry to be here and not flying." I reflected on how many times in life my plans were put on hold for any number of reasons. The news showed a half million dollar vacation home being washed away by the mid-Western flood. Can there be anything better than TV news to put the proper perspective on how insignificant our personal disasters end up being in face of the disasters others in this world face?