The Oyster Remedy

Electricity is, to me, a very complicated thing. There are a few categories of the scientific in which I can hold my own, however, math, as we have seen, is not one, nor is electricity and I perceive a complicity here. Something about electrons doing this and positive and negative charges doing something else. The short version goes like this. The power in my apartment went out yesterday and my first reaction was to hunker down and wait for someone to rescue me. By the way don't phone 911 if your power goes out; they can't help.

I told myself to remain calm and began to calculate the hours it would take for me to freeze to death. I imagined that days later as the first team kicked open the door they would find me huddled on the floor in front of my ceramic space heater clutching one of those little instant heat packs you can buy at Home Depot but only supply enough heat to slightly warm the tips of your fingers when it's your heart that needs heat.

I tried to recall my survival skills, learned at the foot of a cub scout master who later went to jail for fondling the kids he fostered and couldn't remember even the first thing about surviving at close to zero temperatures in a downtown apartment. I decided that all I could do was bundle up and strike out to try to reach a safe haven, maybe a restaurant or a bar that might be open at noon. By the time I got to the Whalesbone I was kind of cold so I decided I needed a stiff drink to warm up my extremities, and some oysters to revive my failing constitution.

Have you ever wondered what it might be like to freeze to death? I had a friend who, while hitchhiking home on a cold and snowy night, decided to just lie down and rest for a bit in a snowbank by the side of the road. The way he told the story to me sounded almost magical.

As fatigue rusted his joints he knew instinctively that if he stopped he might never get up but he couldn't resist the lure of the soft snow, so close and comforting. He tells me that the curious thing was that he had the foresight to pull his coat down over his knees as he sat down to take a quick nap. The snow had been falling all afternoon and the smart place to be was at home riding out the sub-zero temperatures with a bottle and a dog. Not him. He fell over at one point and when they picked him up he was stiff and fetal but alive. He recalled that as the biting cold gave way to numbness his thoughts drifted and elements of his life played out before his eyes. He remembered the time he had stormed his neighbors garden for carrots, ripping them from the ground at a dead run as the owner shouted and chased him for close to a city block before he cut across the field, leaving the old man far behind. Then he thought about kissing Sue Morton and how much he was tormented by his classmates for having done it, but he thought she was pretty anyway. Then he recalled his first grade teacher, Mrs. Zogalo, who had nice legs but not quite as nice as Miss Le Bras'. He fought the return to consciousness with all he had because it hurt when they thawed out his limbs, like nothing had hurt before.

When I got home I wasn't worried about the electricity anymore. In fact I had forgotten about it and flipped the light switch at the top of the stairs. I was in bed, reaching to turn out the bedside lamp when I remembered it shouldn't have been on at all. I laughed and scolded myself for being such a ninny and passed out, full to the top with oysters, beer and memories of Miss Le Bras' legs. Winter isn't so bad as long as you have an emergency plan.