I was shopping the other day, getting some last minutes items for another camping/car show excursion. Just as I headed to the cashier the power went out. Normally, I would have just left my cart and left the store, but I didn’t because the same thing happened when my husband and I were at Home Depot the day before. Their generator was good enough to keep the registers on and to process credit cards. I figured this other big box store, OK, Walmart, would have a similar system. They did not, which I didn’t find out until I scanned everything and tried my card. I did my best not to take it out on the employees. They were all frantic as it was, because they closed down the day before for the same reason. I had to go to another store and shop all over again.

There was obviously something going on in the neighborhood, because the outage solicited a slow-moving fire truck the first day, and the second day police cars, driving around town, looking for what? It irritates me when I don’t know what’s going on. I need closure. I was cranky that a large grocery store didn’t have better generators. I mean, I can live without a new double spigot for my garden for a day or so, but it would be difficult manage without food. To be fair, I was at that particular store buying large quantities of snack nuts that the other grocer didn’t have in that size and Costco didn’t carry in that flavor. I can live without massive quantities of nuts for a bit, but I was thinking of other people with small children. Yeah, that’s my story, thinking of others.

To bring my grumpiness full circle, I hated that I was such a creature of the 21st century that I couldn’t navigate the world without technology for an hour. In the old days, they would have ca-chinged the register manually, taken my check, or even swiped my credit card on a manual slider thingy. Yes, I’m that old, though it wasn’t really that long ago. I think I was in my 40s (30s?) before complete automated take-over was the norm. I’m in my 50s now.

Ah, those were the days. Well, maybe they weren’t. Technology has truly made our lives easier, but when something as simple as a power outage takes down the world, or at least the square mile radius it seemed to affect, it makes me understand why the scientists worry about terrorists striking our infrastructures. My youngest and her classmates had to do a project in their freshman year of high school dealing with apocalyptic scenarios. They chose a zombie take-over (like that would happen), but had to research how long it takes a body to decompose (meaning how long would they have to survive before the zombies quit attacking), how much food and water they’d have to stock-pile and how they’d get it. It was quite the intricate survival plan. All I did in high school was the Oregon Trail simulation game where we had to plan how to move our wagon trains from east to west. We died as soon as we got to the first prairie because my team and I planned to forage firewood on the way and didn’t pack it. Lesson one, prairies don’t have trees.

So I drove my gas-powered car home after my hour of “roughing it in the wild” without power. I sat in my air-conditioned house, with dinner I picked up from Subway and ruminated on how helpless I’d be if our whole societal infrastructure were to fail. At least I have firewood on my back patio.

Gretchen Leigh is a stay-at-home mom who lives in Covington. You can read more of her writing on her website livingwithgleigh.com, on Facebook at “Living with Gleigh by Gretchen Leigh.” Her column is available every week at maplevalleyreporter.com under the Life section.