Childhood fears

Childhood is one word... but Robin Hood is two. English is a silly language sometimes.

___a story by steven___

When I was younger I had a fear of power outages. the lights would go out, it always happened on "dark and stormy nights", my older brother and younger sister told me that lightning might strike us at any time. I survived till high school and college but my fear remained because I had a lot of things going on in my computer. I was playing or working with them all the time. If the power went out all my work would be lost, not to mention it might frag the hard drive and screw up the boot process for "windows" when it came back on. And my home network was set up as dynamically assigned ip's but there were port forwarding rules to static ip's ... The whole thing tied it's self into knots when the power went off.

Then I went to Argentina, they call "power" "luz" there. and there are not power outages because they don't have a name for them, just "se fue la luz" or "se corto' la luz" which is the same as "the light left" or "the light cut it's self". also in Argentina i noticed that it wasn't important to have electricity on every where all the time. The weather wasnt always dark and stormy either, the lights went on and off at their leisure. and the world didn't shut down because the power was off.

On November 2nd of this year. I experienced a power outage. So I did the dishes. it gave me time to think. After it was all done I wrote the following in a note book:

The power went out today. Stayed off for an hour, but it wasnt long enough. I hoped it wouldn't come back on.
What would I do if it never came back on? I suppose it would depend on how it goes out and what exactly stops working. I mean if it's some alien force the stops all "high tech" like the S M Stirling novels it would mean different things than if the electrical grid fails but cars and batteries and generators still work. I can't think of any reason for the power not to come back on though. perhaps a huge attack like the Jericho tv show could shut things down for a year or two in some places but it would always come back on. Electricity is too useful to leave dead. we arent going to hand crank start our cars again. We will always have electricity.
But sometimes I think I can give it up myself. Quit it like a bad drug. It's not a drug though... is it? I'm not addicted to my technology, it just helps me to do more, and faster, and better right? I type faster than I can scribble these words and the applications have spell check. they sometimes have a built in thesauores too, so why should I neglect to use the tools I have a avallible? even this pen and wire bound note book was made using a hige rung on the technology ladder. What benifit would i get if I turned off my electricity?
Why do the Amish do it? I can't hink of any reasonother than freedom... but that hasent been proven yet. I know i would talk more with Vanesa in person, and I could practice my violin and juggling. If there was no eletricity in the walls to power my T.V. life would seem simpler if we went to bed and rose with the sun. it would be a fun game to play or a test to pass. a week with out electricity but I can't think of a reason to leave it off after that.

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thats what i wrote in my note book. I added the hyper-links in my head while i was writing it and made sure to transfer them into this digital media as well.