Cathartic Confessions

Electricity to a house is like blood to a body. Cold, colorless, and silent are characteristics that accurately describe the Sigma Nu house, my home, this weekend. I couldn't stand to be in this place without that certain aspect of life that electricity brings to it. There was just a strange eeriness hanging in the air. I could hear every little sound that this old house made. As soon as that noise would fade into the distance there was a sudden silence. It was so thick and lonely, I couldn't think about anything else except for where I would rather be. I don't think it is quite what Simon and Garfunkle meant, but the sounds of silence in this case made me jittery and uneasy when sitting in my dark room.

I came home around 5 in the morning after an eventful and movie-filled evening and pull up to an unusually dark house. No flood lights on outside and no trace of hall lights peeping through shut window blinds. I gave a casual thought to a scary movie I just saw called...well...Saw. I open the house door and, not at first but before the door shuts behind me, I realize there are no lights in the house. There are no lights anywhere. I flip the hall light switch a few times to no avail. Quickly retreating back to my car, not having the patience and energy to troubleshoot the problem and...well...not frightened but...well...out of "caution," I returned to the house where I watched the movies and crashed on the couch.

The next morning I went back to the house full of ambition and determination to get the joint jumping with juice again. Like any normal person, I first check the breaker box. The breaker box is a metal box that houses several switches. When these switches are on, it allows electricity to freely flow, lighting and heating the air and water of you home. These switches act as a safety device and will actually turn themselves off whenever the circuits are overloaded. When certain switches are off, certain parts of the house do not receive any electricity. To turn them back on and allow electricity to flow again, you just simply switch it back on. It is exactly like a light switch controlling the flow of electricity to and from the light bulb. The breaker switches control the flow of electricity to and from your house. In short, they keep your house from blowing up. So I venture outside toward all the other electric stuff of which I have no clue is used for and find the dimly lit closet that houses our water heater, some pipes, lots of dust, and, of course, our beloved breaker box. I open the breaker box and Ah-ha! Elementary, Watson, elementary. Three of the breakers were not lined up with the others, just simply flip them over. Well, nothing happened. With my confidence draining I am out of ideas, just like most other normal people after flipping a few switches in the breaker box. I call an old trusted friend to help solve the mystery and he suggests calling the city utility guys to give it a look.

So I call the city electrical department and in no time, thanks to Ruston's fine utility service, some electrical guys showed up with some fancy tools and big trucks. Yeah that's right, the trucks with the cool lift basket showed up. I had to swallow the question to ride it many times over in order to maintain a responsible, unimpressed air. You know, that attitude all guys get when around guys that know more about "guy stuff" than they do. Anyways, the city utility guys first check the breaker box and then check the meter reader thing and conclude that there was nothing wrong with the power being supplied by the city and that I needed to contact an electrician to fix any further problems.

Well, it being the weekend, electricians are hard to come by and I had to go to work. So I sat on it for a while and called a few people I know telling them about the strange power outage that occurred to the Sigma Nu, "yeah, no other houses on the street....yeah, just ours...yeah, I know, it's weird." The first thing everyone asked was if I checked the breaker box. "Yeah yeah, I know I know....I did that already..." with a sound of annoyance every time it was asked...as if they thought I didn't know what I was doing. I would say, "Of course I checked the breaker box!" and then I would try to one up them with some fancy electricity talk I learned from my circuits class last year by randomly throwing in some words like "fuse box","transistors","op amps", I might have even said something about "magnetic permeability," who knows. But, regardless, I kept my know-it-all-about-guy-stuff stature in check, that was the important thing.

Sunday rolled around and still we are without. At work again, I finally reached an electrician who was willing to check the problem out. I left work to go meet the guy and, of course, insulting me, as he carries his bulky fancy electrical tools, the first thing he checks is the breaker box. So I go and sit at a distance, but within view, not wanting to irritate him by nosing around and looking over his shoulder. Next he retrieves a flashlight from his truck. Like an uncertain student handing the finished test to the professor, I thought "maybe I should have looked at it a bit longer before calling him." Three seconds later he leans his head out of the closet and asks, "This is the season when the Lakers turn off?" Utterly confused, "what?" He asks again, this time purposely over-emphasizing clarity, "Is there a reason why all the breakers are turned off?" Uh-oh. I hurry over there and come up with some lame excuse like someone must have been pulling a prank or something. I watched my house come back alive as the electrician simply switched all the breakers on. I had a hard time looking the guy in the face after that. I am such an idiot!

However, in an attempt at my defense: first, when I checked the breakers the first time, who would have thunk it that ALL the breakers would switch off, except three. I simply aligned those three with the 37 other breakers. Second, the city electric guys didn't even catch it. Third, the genius electrician with the flashlight, admitted that it was a dark room and it was hard to read the labels as I disgruntledly scribbled him a check for $82.50...grrr.

So, if you could, let's try to keep this little episode just between you and me.

Thanks to all of you who helped me out during this dark period. A special thanks goes out to Jared and Amanda whose sincerity and kindness is something I admire and strive for in my own actions.