The Day the Lights Went Out

I pulled up a chair next to Mama's, and with a big grin, she pressed the power button. The screen flickered momentarily, then went black again.

She pressed it again. Still nothing.
About that time, my brother let us know that the electricity had gone out. No big deal. That happens during storms sometimes.

Mama looked worried. Could her computer have blown something in the fusebox?
We decided to try again later. First, we'd go out to eat at their favorite buffet place about 15 miles away. My dad phoned ahead, but was told that they were closing for the night. "Electricity's out," said the owner.

Now my mom was really worried--certain that her computer had somehow overloaded the system for our area.

So there she was, feeling terrible about the loss of electricity in our valley. She thought sure she'd hired a capable young man to do the wiring, and everything seemed to be set up right. What could have possibly gone wrong?

We decided to make sandwiches and have a light meal at home. A couple of hours later, the lights came back on and we all cheered. My dad, the news freak, turned to the evening news and was greeted with this headline:

"A major transmission line failure has knocked out power to 4 million people in eight West Coast states..."

You should've seen my mom's eyes widen.

How could one little computer cause such a blackout?

The truth is, my mom's first computing experience just happened to coincide with an electrical outage on the entire west coast of the U.S. It was fun to watch her imagine that her new computer had caused the local, county, state, and regional transformers to go down.

She enjoyed computing on that "big beige box" until she passed away in 2004. I miss her enthusiasm for keeping up with new technology. Most of all, I miss her morning emails, which she rarely missed sending. I've kept them in a special folder, and every now and then, I read them for a good laugh.