The electric joys of Christmas

What if, on the first day of Christmas, your true love gave to you the joy of uninterruptable power service? Wouldn’t that be the greatest gift ever? A Christmas miracle?

Granted, uninterruptable power service isn’t possible. I know that. Although, to be fair, utilities do a darn good job of making an outage a truly rare thing. They can’t really control Mother Nature, but they give it the good ol’ college try. I can say, actually, that I haven’t had any noticeable outages this year---maybe a flicker during a storm. But, everything came right back on quickly, including during the long ice storm in February where I spent a good hour whacking giant icicles off my house with a shovel. (It looked like my front porch had a scary mouth full of pointy monster teeth.)

Sadly, though, uninterruptable power wasn’t always the case at my abode.

As I finished wrapping my piles of Christmas presents this year, I was reminded of a time about three years ago, a day when I was running early on Christmas purchases and had just started wrapping when the lights went out. Darkness. Complete. I tried to remember where I stuck the flashlight. Then, there was a flicker of power hope. The TV recovered, then the lights. Then it was off again. Total. I did remember where the flashlight was, finally.

And the power was off for nine days.

A freak ice storm had taken down half of the city. Limbs were everywhere. I spent that night listening to sirens, to limbs fall and to the crackle of transformer explosions. And that night I hoped for a Christmas miracle. It was down near 20 degrees. I was buried under blankets with my clothes (including shoes) still on clinging to the last bits of battery in both my flashlight and cell phone.

And, all I wanted for Christmas was power. Not those awesome Hello Kitty slippers. Not some delicious summer sausage from Hickory Farms. Just power.

I got that wish, finally. In fact, I got it in a rather Scrooge moment. I’d been without power for nine days. After the flashlight went out and I realized the cell phone was near that point as well, I called my father who came and did what daddies do. He rescued me. (His house had power.) I returned to my place over the following weekend and had just gotten good and thoroughly chilled again when I noticed that my neighbors across the street had power.

In fact, they had so much power that they strung Christmas lights into the front yard to show it off. Or, perhaps, to show off their Christmas spirit. But, I wasn’t feeling the Christmas spirit at that moment. I was feeling irked. Their act of Christmas spirit was irksome.

And, I stood in the doorway, wrapped in blankets, contemplating a loud, primal “bah-humbug” and flinging myself across the street to rip down every last shiny strand like a madwoman.

Then, behind me in the dark, I heard the refrigerator kick on. It took a second for me to figure out the significance. When I did, I ran around the house turning on everything that required power: the lights, the televisions, the heater. I was giddy with the power of power. It was, for me, a Christmas miracle. (I even did a little dance. Don’t tell anyone.) There is no gift like the joys of modern life, the comfort of heat and light and those tiny people inside the TV.

So, as I finish wrapping these gifts three years later, I am still thankful of my greatest gift of all: a (mostly) uninterruptable flow of power.

To AEP-PSO: Thank you for a good year of good service. You’ve given me exactly what I want for Christmas.