The Bright Side of the Power Outage

by Michael Shorter

Photo by Leio McLaren on Unsplash

Although I was far from experiencing the worst of the recent nor’easter, the night the storm still proved very inconvenient. I am in a long-distance relationship, which requires planning to see each other weeks ahead of time and booking flights. This was the second time I would be seeing my girlfriend, Cheyanne, all of 2021. Her last visit, she only came up for 5 days. However, this time I got to see her for over two weeks. Unfortunately, we didn't plan for her flight to be directly into a nor’easter! 

I had been getting super excited to finally be able to see my girl again, so I was unbelievably worried that the storm would either cancel, redirect, or delay her flight. Lucky enough for us, the flight wasn't affected, but the ride to pick her up from the TF Green airport was! My mom wanted to drive me because she refused to trust my teenage delinquent driving, especially in a storm. After an hour and a half of constantly feeling like the car was going to flip over from the sheer rain and wind power alone, we finally made it to the airport. We picked up Chey only to repeat the whole process over again on the way home, but at least I was with her. 

When we got home it was around midnight, we were tired but we still wanted to spend quality time together. We agreed to lay down and watch a horror movie together in the spirit of Halloween. It took us nearly twenty minutes just to figure out what we wanted to watch, but we eventually landed on Texas Chainsaw Massacre. By this point it was around 1am. About fifteen minutes into our movie, all of a sudden, the power is gone. We were both annoyed that the power went out, but still terribly happy that we were reunited. We decided to light a candle, and we talked and cuddled until we fell asleep. 

When I woke up the next morning, I saw school was cancelled. Feeling a bit appreciative about the cancellation, I turned off my alarm and we didn’t wake up until two in the afternoon. Cheyanne wanted to go out somewhere, but it was still nasty outside, so I thought we could try and check the mall. I was wrong; There was no power all throughout Hyannis. Even all the stop lights had gone out overnight, and people were driving through them aimlessly like laws had ceased. Chey and I made an executive decision that we should just go home, chill, and stay safe. We started playing Monopoly with my mom and her boyfriend, and 10 minutes into the game, our power magically came back on. 

We were the first people I know on Cape Cod that lost power and got it back that early. Although the power outage had terrible timing and was anti-climactic at the same time, it made an excuse for me and my girlfriend to truly focus on each other and nothing else. I didn’t take the time for granted, we made the best of it and I wouldn’t have wanted it to go any other way.

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