On a clear summer day, one of the last things you expect is a power outage. I love the great outdoors as much as the next guy; but several over-100-degree days in a row had made homebodies out of most of the folks in my small Texas town. Let’s face it -- we are pretty much babies when it comes to comfort (air-conditioning being one of our “binkies”).
After I had finished my ceremonial rolling of the eyes at the loss of wattage, I ventured outside of my cool, fortress of solitude. When there’s no electrical storm and the power goes out, it’s natural to want to find out if you’re the only one affected -- or if your neighbors, too, are “suffering.” Well, that day I wasn’t the only one affected; nor was I the only one who ventured out into the hazy heat. As a matter of fact, many of us started walking around the concrete jungle of our neighborhood. And then an extraordinary thing happened -- we started interacting. Yeah, mine’s out, too. . . How’s your yard been handling this heat? . . How old is Tommy, now? My goodness. And I found that this strange unknown species of near-dwellers called “neighbors” –- were charming. Previously the depth of our relationship had been relegated to a welcome-to-the-neighborhood batch of cookies and an occasional obligatory wave. But now, we were really communicating and (dare I say it?) -- getting to know each other.
As I finally went back inside, I felt a little guilty. It took a power failure to get all of us gophers to crawl out of our respective holes. It was almost as if the inner dialogue could have been: Well, there’s no electricity, so there’s nothing to do. Dang! I guess I’ll have to go out and talk to somebody! And then, exercising my desire to be a deep thinker and have an artist’s soul, I decided to turn this encounter into a metaphor for life. So, if you’ll humor me. . .
Could it be that some of the technological advances that were intended to make us more “connected” have instead robbed us of the most basic necessity: community? Now, I’m not referring to an online community, but one of those weird communities our parents talked about; you know, the ones characterized by sharing recipes, sitting on the front porch, and occasionally even (gasp!) turning off the television.
Perhaps we have become too dependent on the constant hum of laptops, e-mail, cell phones, and Blackberrys to keep us “in the mix;” when in fact, these are the very “binkies” that have isolated us from the one phenomenon that you can’t digitize -- human touch. After a few more decades of being lulled by the squeak of the super-information hamster wheel we’re running on, we may look up to find ourselves socially backwards.
Now before you label me a “Mayberry reject” who doesn’t know his modem from a hole in the ground -- I do enjoy many of the perks of modern-day advances. My family and I rely on our gadgets on a daily basis. But on the all-too-rare occasion that we find ourselves at home with “nothing to do”, we have to guard against ending up in separate rooms staring at our screen of choice.
So, do we need to get rid of everything that plugs in or beeps? No. But should we set aside time to slow down, shut the Windows (XP, that is), and get to know our neighbors? I think so. Otherwise, we might eventually download ourselves right out of knowing who we really are.
Growing up, my family used to play a lot of board games. One I used to love was Clue. Remember Clue? I guess it was kind of brutal for a nine-year-old, though. “I think Professor Plum bashed the guy’s head in with a candlestick!” 
