By Annie Liang
Gargoyle assistant editor
Posted Monday, April 3, 2006, The OG, opinions

[Note: This column can also be found as an April 3 entry in the Gargoyle staff blog.]

My power went out yesterday.

I know: It's not quite an “ohmygod” worthy statement. “So what?” you're probably thinking. “Stop whining. At least nobody you know got hurt.”

And yet, it's not until something like this happens that you realize how utterly dependent our society is on things like electricity and running water — things I've taken for granted.

Sunday evening, right after dinner, I headed upstairs to do my calculus homework. It was a bit of procrastination — but hey, there were still at least three hours left before I needed to sleep, and there was no way calculus was going to take that long. Right?

Wrong.

The siren went off, and we headed down to the basement. Still no worries at that point. I like our basement. We've got couches, and a TV and a table, so it's really not a bad place to get stranded in. I laughed and said that it might actually be sort of fun — a Champaign-scale moment of excitement. My mom's turning on the TV to get some news and I'm flipping open my calculus book when the power goes off.

I freeze. It's pitch dark in the room. I look down at the dark pages of my calculus book, and it suddenly dawns upon me that I'm kind of screwed.

I spend the next hour trying to do my homework via flashlight. It doesn't work too well, mainly because my eyes are ultra-sensitive and started hurting. To cut a long story short, at 8 we finally go upstairs to rummage for candles and matches. Being extremely prepared, we have neither (save for a couple of those birthday candles).

Our neighbor enlightens us with the knowledge that we can open the garage door manually, so we head out to my mom's office where there's light (all hail electricity, please). The town feels kind of ghostly as we drive down the darkened roads. It's strange. No city lights. No traffic lights. Just … black.

My mom brakes suddenly, and I'm thrown forward. She apologizes and says that she didn't realize there was an intersection. I didn't realize it either. The traffic light was off, and there wasn't a stop sign. We watch as a car speeds across, and we both shudder a little. What if we hadn't stopped?

I think we're all pretty lucky. The tornado didn't stike us, no one I know got hurt, and really, what happened to me last night was simply a minor inconvenience. I ended up spending an unnecessarily long time trying to get my homework done, and I had to sit in the dark a little. Big deal.

But people got killed yesterday. Houses were destroyed. What if that had been us? I've lived in Champaign-Urbana all my life, and I've been through multiple tornado warnings but no tornados. We've been lucky is really all I can say.

What if our house had been demolished? I didn't have electricity, but at least I had running water. What if I didn't have that either? What if the power outage was permanent? Just how dependent are we, as a society, on things like this? My life is pretty stable, I think. I feel safe at home. But just how secure are we all? Isn't it all, in some way, just an illusion? We rely heavily on electricity and running water, and we really don't have much control over those things.

Just some things to think about.