BLACKOUT

I experienced my first blackout last night while in Florence, SC, the place I am supposed to be writing, but instead I was watching The Inheritors Part I.  

​No one is truly prepared for a blackout, which comes like an unexpected thief in the night.​

During the outage, I was reminded of my grandmother’s saying, “tomorrow is not promised, so do it now…”, which used to irritate the hell out of me as a boy because she was always saying that, always using old wife’s tales and Bible quotes along with an occasional “switch” broken from a bush to keep us three boys in line. 

​Then there was that end of the world stuff she frequently used to put the fear of sin and God in us.  So in our bedroom at night my middle brother and I planned how we were going to find a place to hide and stay together when fire and brimstone came, and we would avoid all that chaos the rest of the world had to suffer.

​When I think of my second (middle) brother now, I realize there was a time in my life when I did appreciate family very much.
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I had flashlights, candles and battery backup for the cellphone, which I played on for a minute a two, sending silly messages to SK.  But I am so not a devoted mobile user.  I don’t like the small screen and hate having to wear my glasses to view it and, #2 and #3, I simply don’t understand the cellphone, nor do I want to figure it out.  Sometimes, I believe my cellphone is a monster with its own private thoughts because it does things I never intended. I have no control of it.

 I am old school about some things including music and “The Edge of Night”. 

You could say I fell in love with the computer more than any of man’s other inventions and go a little mad without it.
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That’s something I got to work on, something I got to get over and improve to avoid all that fire and brimstone when shit happens...
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