Pixie Stix and Hamster Wheels

Click.

That's the sound of the power turning off across an entire town at the same time, just before the dinner hour. The quiet is deafening. Then, just as abruptly, another sound begins. Like the incessant buzz of a mosquito in your ear, the squeal starts softly and gains momentum making the hair on the back of necks rise. Parents everywhere rush to bathrooms and sheds-- to any door that locks-- trying to outrun the impossible.  

The whine of a child that has never had to play without technology is almost as fear provoking as the sound of a bear outside a tent; add the lack of technology to the setting of the sun and imminent darkness, and all hell breaks loose.  

The best part of the whole scene is that my brother's three kiddos were visiting my parents, as well as me and my brood so when the power went off, my brain immediately thought, "Frick. How will we keep them happy when they haven't had dinner?"  Grandpa quickly stepped up and turned on the barbeque, I brought out hamburgers and hot dogs.  There were no buns, because we were supposed to have tacos that night, so we improvised and toasted up some bread. 

As we flipped the last burger for the first time, the neighbour next door came out and announced, "Hey! My [storm-monitoring] radio just came on. Storm's gonna hit in 10 minutes."  Now, with the skies almost black and the clouds circling like Jets and Sharks in West Side Story, it was clear that the storm was close. What we didn't know is that just beyond our vision, the skies were an eerie green: tornado skies. Frickty frick frick.

We turned off the barbeque when the first gigantic drops began to fall, left the meat, and hustled the brood inside. Great. At least outside it was fairly light out-- inside was much darker (why we didn't think to open the blinds is beyond me) and now some of the kids were getting anxious with the wind coming up and the rain coming down. Frickty frick frick. 

The skies reminded me of "The Nothing" from The Neverending Story, if you've seen that. If you haven't, suffice it to say the skies kinda made you want to pee your pants. The kids started to panic about the darkness and the storm-- mostly the darkness-- and I tried to keep everyone calm.  Just before the crying started, Grandpa arrived with two flashlights, saving the day.  

Fine. 

It wasn't the kids. It was me. I'm afraid of the dark and all but lost my composure when the lights went out and was huddled in the fetal position in the corner while my 4-year-old rubbed my back and said everything would be ok. Whatever. You get the point. It was dark. 

We hung out in the front room watching the paint on the walls, each of us wishing the TV would magically work.  We looked at each other. We looked at the walls. We looked at each other again. And the walls. I think someone even whistled, but it could've been the wind. At some point, though, my Spidey Sense told me to get away from the big windows.  I shouldn't say Spidey Sense, because really, what told me to get away from the windows was seeing the giant tree in the front yard bending like a wet noodle to the wind and rain.  

As the kids continued to stare at each other, I got up and went into the kitchen.   I searched around for some random supplies-- my dad always has arrowroot cookies around because he likes to have a few before bed. Bingo.  Grandma keeps mini-marshmallows at the house for all Hot Chocolate emergencies, good. And I happened to have brought a bag of mini-chocolate bars (which, by some miracle, I didn't bust into on the way to Grandma's.).  Ta-da. S'mores were born.

I had one kid bring each supply (and one kid hold the flashlight) downstairs to the family room and we opened up the food and dug in.  After a few minutes, once the sugar rush began and after they realized the TV downstairs ALSO wasn't working, I sensed a mutiny afoot.  Grandpa sat in one corner holding the baby as a human shield while Grandma, who was sick as a dog, slept upstairs.  Yes, in retrospect, I should've woken her to bring her down to safety, but I just kept thinking that if she could sleep through the storm she might feel better when she got up. Plus, it never got "Dorothy-To-Oz" bad, so save your judgement for St. Peter, ok? 

The kids were getting antsy and I could hear whispers of a revolt when I realized what needed to be done. I hooked up a giant hamster wheel to an electric generator and loaded up the kids inside.  We started with the littlest ones, since their stamina isn't as long as the older ones, and had them run. When one would tire, they'd tag out, but basically it worked like the old carrot-on-a-fishing-pole routine: as the kids generated enough energy to run the generator, they could watch TV. If they stopped running, the TV stopped. 

All I had to do was keep the s'mores coming (and then pixie stix) and we had enough power to run not only the TV, but most of the household electronics.  We had the only house with electricity in the entire city-- people were stopping by to have a nice cool drink and something to eat while the storm raged outside.  

Grandma even felt so good she came down in her flapper dress and played the piano for tips. The kids didn't mind the running because they could watch whatever they liked (within reason), which got me thinking that a power outage might be the cure for the childhood obesity issues in North America. If you had to run miles just to watch a 1/2 hour of TV, you'd either get good at running, or you'd find something else to do with your time.  

Thankfully, the power came on sometime around midnight, just before the kids had consumed the last of the pixie stix.  I carried my giant hamsters upstairs to their respective beds while they dreamt of a world where electronics worked with the flick of a switch, and we closed down our makeshift saloon, snickering all the way to the bank.