Boom Boom, Out Go the Lights
I was in my room, listening to the grinding, growling noise my old alarm clock makes (which I don’t use, by the way, since I use my cell phone for alarms), when suddenly it quit. “Finally gave up the ghost,” I thought, and left the room. Things were much too quiet. “Is the power off?” I asked.
“Yeah,” I heard a chorus of voices.
Just when I’d started dinner! So it’s like oh great…”Mom, what are we going to do about dinner?”
“I don’t know, I’ll call the power company.”
I heard Dad come up. “Power out up here?” he asked.
“Yeah,” everybody said.
So Mom called the power company. They asked if we’d heard a boom, but Mom said no.
That was about 3:40 pm.
Joe and Eric were at work at the neighbor’s, Mrs. S.’s, and not expected back until after dark. We were all in the living room, just hangin’ out, when they walk in.
“Power out?” Joe asked.
“Yeah,” everyone said.
They laughed. “I thought when Anne called about the book she’d tell me if the power was out,” Joe said. (I’d called to ask where a book, Deception, was). “But when we came and the lights were off, we guessed the power must have been.”
“Why, did you have anything to do with it?” Mom asked.
“Did you get in an accident?” Dad asked.
They laughed again. “No…” Joe said. “We did it.”
We all laughed. You gotta understand; Joe usually tells a joke before he tells the truth.
“Did you really?” Mom asked. She’s learned!
“No,” Joe said, “but we were with the guy who did it!”
We laughed again.
“Mrs. S.’s son was driving the skid steer, with an auger, and he broke the line.”
“Did you hear a boom?” Mom asked.
“Yeah,” Joe said. He explained how they were putting in fencepoles, and had had accidentally severed the buried line.
“Man, whenever the power goes out I expect some idiot ran over a pole or something, but not my own brothers!!” I said (or something to that effect) and everyone laughed so hard.
So that’s the story of the day!
