What follows is an account of my evening so far…

As some of you know, I live on the 9th floor of my highrise building here in lovely Denver, Colorado. Tonight was getting ready to come to a close like any other, with me watching some tv and then going to sleep. But tonight was anything but ordinary…

I was really tired from trekking all over the 16th Street Mall putting movie postcards in various shops for work, so imagined that I must have fallen asleep and then rolled over on the remote when my tv suddenly turned off.

In my sleepy state, I failed to recognize that my lights had also turned off. After a few seconds of trying to find my remote to turn the tv back on, I realized that I was sitting in a pitch black room without even the faintest trace of light from a blinking DVD player clock.

The power had gone out.

The street lights in my neighborhood are bright enough to provide some decent light near the windows, so I opened up my blinds and began searching for a flashlight using only the the pale blue gleam coming from my iPhone to illuminate the path.

I finally found a flashlight and tried to juggle it, my iPhone, and the remote (which I was still holding for some reason) as I went back into my bedroom where it was brightest.

Most of my phones are cordless and thus, require power to work, so I dug around under my bed for a regular old cord phone. I finally found a big bulky one that I had from my dorm in college and managed to plug it in, sliding aside my now useless trendy cordless phone.

Since my mom lives only a few blocks away, I figured I’d give her a call and see if her power was out too. Fortunately, it wasn’t and she picked up the phone to hear me, exhausted and disoriented, on the other end asking her if she had lights.

I put her on hold as I tried to call the property management’s after hours number. As the attendant finally answered, I blurted out exactly what had happened, only to find that there were problems with the connection and she couldn’t hear a word I was saying. In fact, the call was disconnected soon after.

This was going beyond annoying and starting to get a bit more hazardous. Was my mom still on the other line or had the phone lines also gone down? If everything was down in the entire building, would the emergency lights still work? Would the electronic door locks prevent people from leaving? Would I be able to get the car out of the garage for work in the morning with the powered door not working?

Thankfully, my mom was on the other end and we both began trying to call the police nonemergency number to see what was going on. Maybe there had been some kind of accident and crews were already on their way to fix it.

The police were unhelpful, since wires going in and out of people’s condos really aren’t their jurisdiction, so they transfered calls to Xcel, the power company. At first, the people on the other line at Xcel acted like the whole thing was a made up fantasy.

“Are you sure it’s the whole building?” They asked patronizingly. “Could it be that maybe you missed a payment and it’s just your power that’s been cut?” After assuring them that I was paid, and that the lights on my entire block were out, they started to look into the problem.

By this point, I had started lighting candles and feeling like I was seriously in a dream. Here I was, sitting in my room, lit only by the flicker of a few candles on the dresser, and dealing with someone from the power company who acted like an individual’s delinquent payment could shut down the power grid for over 100 units in the building. Was everyone tripping balls? What the hell was going on here?

I knew that I had to get up early for work and, after finally getting an answer that the power would hopefully be restored by 4:37AM, I decided to pack up my stuff and head over to my mom’s to get some much-needed sleep.

I got all my overnight stuff together by candle light and changed into some old jeans as I prepared to brave the dark hallway to get to the stairwell.

As I locked the door on my condo, it felt like a zombie movie. The whole building was pitch black and silent, except for a few exit signs which cast an eerie greenish glow on the walls.

I made it to the stairs, which were lit through the emergency generator (thankfully!) and started the decent to the lobby. I had forgotten that the stairwell nearest to my door only goes to the second floor so I had to brave the undead-exit-sign-lit hallways once again to cross over into the other stairwell on a lower floor.

As I slowly opened the door to the lobby, the entire place was dark and empty. I looked for the security guard, who usually hangs out in one of the property management offices at night. He was nowhere to be found.

I heard a faint voice out of the total darkness, a voice that sounded familiar. I don’t know anyone in my building enough to recognize them by voice alone, so I knew it wasn’t another tenant.

As I passed by the conference room area, the voice became a lot clearer.

It was Cartman. Somewhere, someone was watching South Park.

I followed the sound of a pitched up Trey Parker into the big TV room, but the tv was off just like everything else. Was I truly losing my mind? Where the hell was it coming from?

I peaked into the computer room thinking maybe someone had brought their laptop into the lobby to wait for the power to come back on and settled in watching South Park, but again I found only an empty room.

Finally, as I came around the corner, I saw the glowing blue light of a tv mounted on the ceiling in the lounge area. Indeed, there was Cartman on the screen.

My eyes started to adjust and I saw that there were about seven guys sitting there, basking in the glow of the tv in the darkness. They were sitting completely still as if mesmerized by the single functioning piece of electronic equipment in the building.

For a split second, I thought to myself, “This would be an awesome scene in a scary movie.” I could go over to the men, looking for help and answers about the strange power outage, only to have them turn around and be blood thirsty zombies. Or maybe I would go up to them and say something like “Oh thank god! Do any of you know what’s going on?” As I put my hand on one of their shoulders, the head would roll off and fall on the floor. Just then, a machete-wielding serial killer would pop up behind me as the music would build to a suspenseful climax.

As I slowly backed away from the possible zombies watching tv in the lounge, I saw our superintendent, who said someone had called him about the outage and that the tv down there was routed into the emergency system so we could get the news in case of an emergency. He even helped me get the car out of the garage by manually opening the non-functional door.

The whole thing felt like being in a scary movie, only without the scary part, just the suspense and dramatic tension that builds up to the scary part.

Nothing makes you realize how much you depend on things that plug in like being in a situation where you’re without them. For me, the idea of not being able to turn on a light or make a phone call in the usual (cordless) way, is like being in some kind of bizarro world. It’s really strange how much I depend on (and am totally addicted to) the electronics I use on a daily basis.