Return Of Power Was A Moment Frozen In Time

There are things even more insidiously tormenting than losing power for a week.

Like getting it back and then losing it again.

“I’ll never trust again,” I told my wife. This was after I finished sobbing like a jilted schoolgirl and regained enough composure to dial Sherry at work.

Electricity at the Clark house winked on a little before 10 a.m. Tuesday.

Since all my lights were switched off on the main floor, I failed to notice this long-awaited event until 20 minutes later. Then I wandered upstairs and confronted an eerie, unfamiliar glow pouring out of the bathroom. (No, it wasn’t Mayor Jack Geraghty taking one of his Viking showers.)

My face bore the same dimwitted expression worn by drooling cavemen during their first encounter with fire.

DOUG’S BRAIN: “Run. Run. Hide from the evilll.”

Being an EWU-educated thinker, however, it took only minutes to comprehend what was going on.

The realization sent me into a few more minutes of mindless whooping and aboriginal dancing in praise to the power gods.

Then I put on a frilly apron and high heels and went into a Martha Stewart housecleaning frenzy.

DOUG’S BRAIN: “Order. Must restore order.”

OK, I’m exaggerating. I haven’t worn a frilly apron in months.

About 3:20 p.m. - midway through vacuuming a week’s worth of wood stove grime off the kitchen floor - the power died like the Cougars in the Apple Cup.

I waved the useless Hoover wand at the darkness. Paranoid thoughts began skulking through my mind like little trench-coated CIA agents.

How do we know our lightless misery is an unavoidable act of nature?

Could sinister forces be at work, forces designed to drive a grown man crazy enough to skip work and clean house?

I remember an old “Twilight Zone” episode where the power inexplicably went out in a sleepy burg just like Spokane.

A few “haves” still had power while the “have nots” sat stewing in the dark, looking to blame someone for their misfortune.

Suspicions and anger boiled over. Neighbors began shooting each other and rioting in the streets.

The last scene showed beings from another world chuckling at how easy the human race was to take over.

In light of this, does anybody know for certain that Washington Water Power Chairman Paul Redmond isn’t a space alien?

When order breaks down, madness surely follows:

A reader named Gina called to add a bit of her own craziness in the ice storm aftermath.

She was up at 1 a.m., stoking a fire in her fireplace, when the sound of sirens sliced the frosty night like O.J.’s knife.

“Then they were coming down the street,” she says. “Then they were out in front of my house.”

Suddenly, ax-wielding firefighters were on her porch. “Where’s the fire?” they asked the stunned woman when she opened the door.

A neighbor apparently mistook the cheery flicker of fireplace flames through Gina’s window and dialed 911.

A colleague from the food page side of the newspaper theorizes the ice storm is actually God’s wrath on Spokane for picking on fundamentalist loon Coroner Dexter Amend.

Another weird report comes to the newspaper from a man who swears his woman neighbor plans to picket Washington Water Power headquarters with a “Will Give Sex for Power” sign.

If I tried that, I’d never get my power back.

Electricity made a comeback at the Clark house at 5:30 p.m. Tuesday. I slept warm for the first time in eight lousy nights.

Wednesday morning, however, the lights winked off and then on again in an obvious cheap attempt to drive me stark, slobbering mad.

Maybe the space invasion has already begun. I hope the creatures need a columnist.

This is Clark, signing off for now. Klaatu barada nikto.

, DataTimes