Most of the time, we turn things on and off without thinking too much about it. of course there's the occasional thunderstorm/hurricane/heat wave induced power plant failure when rural and/or urban dwellers find themselves in search of a flashlight to figure out what the heck is going on. or, if you are lucky, you have an off the grid cabin somewhere where on summer nights you catch fireflies in a jar to light the way after the embers of the fire circle burn down.
on a day-to-day basis, I am pretty hooked on electricity. the laptop and fully charged iphone that are the weapons of my trade are fairly key to survival. the fridge, and of course the tv that provides a comforting quiet half hour or so for some of my dependents: children, sweet husband and at this moment in time, my dear old dad. dear old dad really loves to watch the stock market ticker and manually calculates his net worth daily in spite of years of encouragement to take the even slightly longer view of a month or a quarter. he also loves to watch the history channel and on occasion the travel channel. at this writing, I am on dad duty at a rickety rental house at the beach. the first time the tv screen turned blue instead of tuning in to the mellifluous tones of Samantha brown, we were right on the phone to the landlord. a local fourth grade teacher who looks as if he logged his fair share of mileage following the dead in the 70s and 80s, he didn't seem to have the faintest idea about the cable tv. so I gutted it out with comcast and set up a service call. for three long days, dear old dad went without samantha. naturally, on the appointed day I stood sentry over the phone, living in fear of missing THE CALL that would tell me the service man was on his way. no call. at 5, the end of the 2-5 window, I placed the obligatory call to comcast myself and was told that the serviceman had cancelled since the customer was not home. now I don't need to tell you what ensued. I am sure you've had the same dialog with your local cable provider once or twice yourself. it just so happens that rickety beach rental's driveway is 20 yards from the entrance to the town beach and service call was set for a day that turned out to be a 10 in terms of beach time. I am pretty sure that if i had binoculars, I would have been able to see the slightly pale and flabby comcast man in his uniform down over at the snack bar up the way.
some people might want to take matters as simple as a cable outage into their own hands, but i've been burned by this approach before and so like to stick to the professionals. my sweet husband and i spent the first few years of our married life in a garret of sorts on the upper west side. the apartment's best feature was a terrace comprised of the downstairs neighbor's rooftop. otherwise, it was good for us but there were certain compromises. such as the bedroom, narrow enough that a double bed took up so much space that an arm extended from a lying down position would meet with the wall at about 135 degrees. another quirk of our newlywed nest was the air conditioning limitation in the lease. due to the landlord's probable lack of wiring up to code, it was written that only one air conditioner be run at a time. there were two windows in addition to the door out to the "terrace" and each of these windows had the special big plug nearby, leaving one to draw the logical conclusion that each window could hold an air conditioner and so they did.
I am a pleaser and a perfectionist which means that I am a stickler for things like leases. one air conditioner at a time was decreed by Mr. Mort Elbirt, and so even on the hottest day, in our garret, one air conditioner we did run.
now, there wasn't anything in the lease about an air conditioner and the television running concurrently so on a particularly scorching evening we were cozied up after our three course meal for movie night. the ac was humming and we were pleasantly chilled. tv on andbzzztboom. blackness. no ac. no nothing. we opened the door to the apartment and were met by a pitch black hallway and the sound of some rustling and concern below. my sweet husband, never shy about electronics and other matters that for all his god given intelligence he has no right to take on, went in to the breach and headed down to the basement to look under the hood. there were a few apartments with lights on so he was able to find his way down and was joined there by neighbor Ned who was clad in a silk kimono and not much else. In spite of the large rent we paid, the basement of the building had not been touched since the era of the horse and buggy and was a dirt floored room with a lot of plumbing and wires hanging around. enticingly, in the back corner loomed a large handle with a faded skull and crossbones sticker plastered to the front.
the gravitational pull of this handle was too much for my sweet husband who, in spite of increasingly loud and high pitched protestations from neighbor ned and the fact that he was standing about ankle deep in water that had been sitting there since 1895 (I knew after a brief 6 months of marriage to stay out of it), approached, touched, reared back and then went for the kill and pulled the switch and flapped it back. total blackness and the eerie quiet that comes when 10 or so window unit air conditioners cease humming instantaneously. as we mounted the six flights of stairs from the basement to the garrett, people were in the hallways canvassing about what to do and one of the long standing tenants placed a call to the landlord. Our concern was limited to where we were going to sleep that evening, and thank god a pal was traveling so we hoofed it a few blocks to another apartment with functioning AC and TV leaving neighbor ned and the rest of the crew to swelter in the dark.
The next day, I navigated a rather irate Mr. Elbirt
you have two air conditioners
we do, but we only run them one at a time. there are two ac plugs
don't lie to me
and so forth.
Years later, we had to get a letter of recommendation from Mr. Elbirt to purchase a co-op and learned that he had died of a heart attack. presumably, the stress of managing law breaking tenants did him in.
There are a few of these types of incidents in our collective history as a family - garbage disposals, alarm systems and the like falling by the wayside with well meaning attempts to fix/stop/etc. But I've got comacast in the crosshairs here at the rickety rental. How dare their technician out and out lie to me? Supervisor Sally is very contrite and apologetic as to the fact that it will be two days before she can get someone out here. So I give dear old dad the bad news and he goes back to his word find puzzle. On the appointed day, I call first thing to be sure that all is in order for the 12-2 window, and a new teleprompt informs me that I can reset my signal after an electrical outage by pressing 2. who knows, maybe running the dishwasher and the washing machine at once counts as an electrical outage. After all, the clocks are forever blinking here at the rickety rental. Please wait 40-60 minutes while we reload your channel line up. And gosh darn it it works. I cancel the service call and post the number on the fridge. All set. A week later, it's part of the routine. Put in a load of dirty clothes and towels, mop down the kitchen counters, start the dishwasher and call my friend at comcast to reload my channel line up. Until, one day, she's not there. My only option is to wait for an operator. Not, we've all had the infuriating experience of hitting “0” repeatedly and being informed in some matrix like command that that option is not valid.... press 1 to return to the main menu, dos to habla espanol and so forth. But in this case, I just want to press 2 and go on about my business. Instead, I have to try to convince customer service representative Johnny to do what she has done for me so beautifully all of these days
Hi, yes, ummm I know why my problem is, I wanted to reset my signal but the command isn't there, can you do that for me?
No ma'am, you don't have any equipment there so I am unable to do that.
Huh. that's weird, I've been doing that about once a day for the past week or so and it seems to have solved my problem.
Well that's not possible. You don't have any of our equipment over there.
Listen, your last name doesn't happen to be Elbirt does it?
What?
Never mind. Just do what I am telling you please. Don't ask questions; just do the thing that she does when I press 2. Don't tell me why it won't work, just do it please.
OK.
And about 40-60 minutes later, the channel line up loaded, Dear Old Dad settled in to watch Samantha Brown in Cambodia and is happy as a clam.
Until I decide to blow-dry my hair.
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