Where were you when…..
John Lennon was murdered?
The Space Shuttle crashed?
The planes hit the twin towers?
Lady Di was killed?
Major events that people always remember where they were when they happened. What they were doing. Who they were with.
Today, everyone in Toronto was doing the ‘Where were you when the big blackout happened?’ Not quite on par with losing cultural icons or terrorist tragedies, but it did spark lots of chatter. Me included.
I left work early to head up north. We were so organized! I was to pick up my friends Molly and Courtney. I was grabbing them at the Go Station near my awesome esthetician (because come on…you have to groom before a cottage weekend!). I was driving on the highway…no lights…so I didn’t know what was going on. All I knew was that our radio stations were dead. I was frantically trying to call my boss to tell him but my godforsaken cell phone wouldn’t work!
When I got to Annie’s she told me about the blackout…after a wax…cause come on it was still hot….I raced to get the guys at the station, knowing they left before the power went out. In the craziness, I found them and we started our way up north. We figured, get on the highway and we’ll be all good. Sure we would…except for gas. We didn’t have much but we thought, ‘what the hell, lets see how far we get’.
We got as far as Barrie where we coasted off the highway, on fumes, into our friends used car dealership. Hello! How perfect. We crashed with Kitchen. Drank beers under the stars in a lukewarm hottub and bbq’ed burgers. The next day, we grabbed a used family van full of gas and headed over to a friends for breakfast. In my blondeness, I distinctly remember asking why the street lights weren’t working. Then we headed north to our friends cottage….did I mention it’s solar powered? Honestly. All in all, we lucked out during the blackout!
Except for one little thing. I forgot that I had a beer fridge on my back porch at home. That had two boxes of burgers in it. I forgot for like a month. In the summer. My friend Clark cleaned out that beer fridge after we discovered what that funky smell was. I would now attempt to save Clark from a great white shark or give him my second born child…the shark is more likely.
All that said. When someone says, ‘Where were you for the blackout?’ I picture this and say….on an island in Georgian Bay with 25 friends. And it was amazing.
Do I remember! I was actually moving at the time…literally! The movers were unloading boxes into our new house. My husband had gone to the basement to try to turn on the air conditioning and poof! all the lights went out. He was thinking that I was gonna kill him because less than an hour into our house & he broke it!
we left for the east coast about 4 days before it happened so we got to watch it from afar 🙂 i do wish i was here for some of it as it would have certainly been memorable to be in the big city all dark.