The Power of Companionship

We lost electricity before 5 p.m. The flickering of the lights before their final surrender suggested to my mother and I that this was no regular power cut. All three of us (my father included) sat in the living room, enjoying Sunday dinner at some time after 5. By 6:15 we were greeted by the pitch blackness of the night.

We used our backup fluorescent lights- we have two of them- for the regular nightly chores: feeding dogs, washing dishes, etc. We sat in the living room chatting for hours, topics ranging from church to politics to fish (we never spoke about milk, but there was no need to).

By 9:30 one of the fluorescent lights discharged, once again plunging the house into darkness. We opted not to use the second light. I prayed for the electricity to return, as I knew that, given I'm the only vampire of the household, within another hour my parents would be in bed and I would be alone. That's exactly what happened.

Given that I'd slept all afternoon, it was gonna be a long night for me. For a while I stared into space, chatted with the dogs, even started playing with the solitary candle my mother had lit in the living room before she went to sleep. It had been almost 6 hours, and still no electricity. I took solace from the fact that I had my CD player and tonnes on CDs to choose from. But Murphy's Law prevailed- for some unknown reason (and for the first time ever) my CD player refused to start. At this point I really wasn't impressed. Then, I turned to my abused but trusty companion- my Motorola E380- and logged into messenger.

After about an hour and a half of messaging (at about 12:30 a.m.), the net on the phone started to fail. About 20 minutes later, my phone (which, half an hour earlier was showing full bars of battery power) showed no bars, and discharged. Despite my misfortunes, I knew at that point that I would go to bed happy. For what had promised to be a long and dreary night had been lifted by 90 minutes of the remote company of a friend, who probably didn't even realize she made my night simply by saying 'heya'.