Outage, as in “We’ll soon be out of yogurt if the power doesn’t come back on. And skinless chicken breasts, ground turkey, mayonnaise, and wild pacific king salmon direct from Alaska.”
Outage? No, outrage that at our age we still have to deal with life’s annoyances, little ones and omg those telephone trees!
Outage: at our age, I spy shortages in collagen, bone mass, heart beats, insulin, t-cells, and just ordinary plumpness and rosiness, in non-drooping apple cheeks. We’ve lost touch with bosom buddies, myriad secretions we now understand the purpose of, and our own waist. Parts are sagging beyond the power of any contrivance to remedy. Weary, we fail to find our balance in a world more alien by the hour, cell phones, keys, and masks notwithstanding. Are we even speaking the same language as those around us, the kids with their memes, tropes, and “random” sprinkled like sugar over our morning cereal? Do they even guess what words can convey?
How we long to join the conversation but lack the necessary vocabulary and swiftness of expression. Our thumbs don’t come equipped lie theirs with sharpened cone-like tips that trip nimbly over keyboards to produce perfect little texts.
A constant see in this brave new world of ours that has to be acknowledged: LOSS. I won’t elaborate but it’s where outage invariably leads…
Can we not pronounce this word, for a bit pretend and rejoice in plentitude? Chubby-cheeked red tomatoes sprouting in our garden patch, black-eyed susans bullying our delicate honeysuckle bush, fat bees flying overhead, drinking deeply, almost colliding with shy hummingbirds? Even green fungus reminding us they’re thriving?
So don’t talk to me of outages. Hey, why is there no outage of virus, the only outage we’d enthusiastically endorse? C’mon, you owe us that much.
Janet Garber is a little outraged about the outage