An Odd Lot

The day was nice enough. It was sunny. The sunlight only served to invigorate us after days of El Nino had sucked our senses dry. We had chores to catch up on while our senses were enlivened by the warmth. In the middle of our busyness, BOOM! and everything went dark. (Yes, it was broad daylight, but my house eats light.) My firebug lit the candles, the other girls got out the board games. An odd thing these days, laughter. The girls sat around the candles and laughed and played together. The adults in the neighborhood all began to peek out.  "Lose power?" "Sure did. Did you hear the boom?" "Yeah. I think it came from the high school side of things."

Neighbors I've never seen came out of hiding. With no power there were no meals to prepare, no laundry to be done, no dishwashers to run. There were no imaginary internet friends to interact with. 

We all, rather stupidly, stepped into the sunlight. There was never so much block walking at once. One neighbor has a grandbaby I knew about but had never seen--before that day. We smiled at each other and waved. And we gawked while the power company sent their crews racing to restore us to normalcy. 

Truly, the explosion had come from the high school side as I thought, and the crew member who discovered the issue cheered. As did we all as we crept back into our caves. 

For a few strange moments, we all felt life.  It was if we, like Dr. Manet, had been "recalled to life." But, El Nino sent us more deluge and we all went back into our caves where the darkness sucked us dry again. 

What an odd lot we are.