You gotta love all those mod cons

We have just experienced the far-flung effects of Hurricane Sandy – a night of high winds, rain and, for our neighbourhood, nine hours without power.  It was interesting trying to get ready for work in the dark this morning; the flashlight just doesn’t give adequate light for applying make-up.  I’ve heard from a neighbour that the power went back on awhile ago, so we won’t be facing a defrosted freezer or spoiled food in the fridge. 

These kinds of experiences make me wonder how I would fare if we had a prolonged power outage.  Today was easy – it was an adventure.  It didn’t take us long to grab our car keys and head out for breakfast.  The outage was very localized so there were lots of places to go.   

But a widespread, long-lasting loss of electricity – what would that look like?  I can’t even look back to the time, a few summers ago, when much of eastern Canada and the northeast States went black – some places for days.  We happened to be on vacation in Central Canada at that time and just heard the news reports.  Even if we had been at home we would have been only mildly inconvenienced – the power was back on in less than a day. 

 

So what would happen if we had no electricity?  I like to think I could adapt.   I used to camp and learned to do without electricity for a few days or weeks – sort of.   There was always electricity and hot water in the washrooms and showers.  Okay, so it wouldn’t be like camping.  It would be like … I guess the way my great- or great-great-grandparents lived.  

 

There would be a big difference, though.  Back before electricity was a given, life unfolded just as it always had – that was the norm.  To give up electricity now would be giving up something I’d always taken for granted.  It would be a backward step instead of the norm.  I don’t know how long it would take to realize that it was the new normal.

 

Jim and I had to really think about what we were doing this morning – we were automatically flipping on light switches that weren’t working, going to open the fridge door, closing a door and blocking out the street light that was inexplicably still burning on the other side of the street, turning up the thermostat that wasn’t even recording the temperature – everything was automatic.  How long would it take to unlearn all those automatic gestures and learn new ones that are so much lower tech?

 

Personally, I’m in no hurry to find out.