April 13 – “Something wrong with your meter …”

So we had a power outage the other day.  There had already been several obvious surges over the course of the storm system that was blowing through the Island.  The lights had flickered three or four times, so we weren’t surprised when it did happen. 

We had just returned home from picking up Cailyn at school.  That was kind of fun in itself, by the way.  I had an umbrella, but she insisted that she didn’t need one.  It would only hamper her style.  Needless to say, by the time we arrived at the truck her shoes, and much of her body, were drenched.  But how can you expect to stay dry when you are busy leaping into and sloshing through puddles?  That’s just … silly.

The power went out within minutes after we got back to the house.  I went ahead and called it in to the power company, just to be sure they had a record of the outage.  Silly me.  Apparently the computer couldn’t understand my Island dialect.  It kept asking me if I needed more time to formulate my response.  All I had to do was read off some numbers.  But apparently that particular set of numbers just wasn’t among those deemed recognizable by the computer powers that be.  I was finally transferred to a human being.  Imagine that.

The lady who took my call was actually very nice.  It took her a few minutes, but whatever she was looking at on her computer finally let her know that there was, indeed, an area wide outage in our area.  It was scheduled to be repaired “no later than 1700 hours.  That’s military time, you know.  It means … um … let’s see … um … I think that would be something like … um … five o’clock.” 

I thanked her and started to hang up when she stopped me.  Well, I guess she didn’t actually stop me.  I could have hung up.  But she asked if I could hold on a second while she checked one other screen.  Foolishly, I agreed.  Sure enough, something on her second screen gave her this information: “Um … I’m sorry, sir, but this screen is telling me that there is something wrong with your meter.  It shows that it is off.  Now, there could be trouble on your end of the meter.  We’re going to have to send out a technician to check it out.  And if the problem is on your end it will cost $50.” 

OK.  Is it just me?  Did I miss something?  Was there some other information that I just didn’t hear?  Was I interpreting what I had heard correctly?  Correct me if I’m wrong.  She had just told me that there was an area wide power outage.  No power was reaching the houses in our neighborhood.  Wouldn’t that, by definition, mean that the meter that records power usage as it enters the house would not be receiving any power, either?  I told her to feel free to send out a technician if she felt that she must, but I didn’t see how something on our side of the meter could cause the meter itself to lose power. 

We were in the dark for about another hour.  Cailyn treated us to an afternoon’s worth of powerless card games by flashlight.  We didn’t actually need the flashlight.  It was still daylight outside, but the flashlight did make the adventure a lot more fun.  Reminded me of some of the hurricane adventures we enjoyed as kids.  The power finally came back on, though.  Oh, and we never saw hide nor hair of a repair technician.

Titus 3:1-2 says, “Remind the people to be subject to rulers and authorities, to be obedient, to be ready to do whatever is good, to slander no one, to be peaceable and considerate, and to show true humility toward all men.”

Father, thank you that your power never goes off.  We always have access to it.  Amen.