The Complaint Game

My electricity went off at least 8 times last night.  At 106+ degrees in Dallas, I guess that is understandable. 

I will be writing a letter to the mayor to ask him to contact Oncor and whoever else is in charge of these problems to try to get this fixed.  My side of our block goes out every single time there is a weather-based emergency, and our neighbors across the street seem to stay on.  My mother’s house never goes out.  It is such a pain. 

I was on twitter and Facebook last night complaining to everyone who would listen about this injustice.  Complaining is, of course, the best part of the fun of enduring a “hardship” – it reminds me of my favorite line from Steel Magnolias – “If you don’t have anything nice to say about someone, come sit next to me.” 

Of course, I know that this power outage is nothing in the grand scheme of things.  As Americans, we have such a high quality of life compared to the rest of the world.  But if my neighbors across the street got to watch Hell’s Kitchen in its entirety, then damn it, I should get to too. 

Tell that to Lisa and Pete.  They are teens who have never had a stable home life.  They’ve been homeless many times.  They have moved around from foster home to foster home.  They have moved around from group home to group home.

Don’t you know that they see other kids at the mall with credit cards and designer shoes and think, if they can have that, why can’t I? 

Don’t you know that they see other kids at school with parents who care enough to attend the school play or the football game and think, why didn’t I end up with parents like that?

My electricity may go out again tonight, and I’ll still be complaining about it to whoever will listen.  But I also know that Lisa and Pete have got me beat.