They’re totally in the dark

IT’S A WINDY WINTER night, and the gusts send a low hum through the attic, as if Mother Nature is drawing a bass fiddle bow across the roof line.

“That’s a concert G,” I tell my wife.

“What is?”

“That hum,” I say. “I think it’s a G. Or a G sharp.”

“Or an H,” she says.

“There is no H,” I say.

“Not yet,” she says.

We are in bed, a bunch of us -- me, my first wife, a couple of kids, a couple of dogs. A cat of questionable character. That’s seven in all. Just what a Santa Ana windstorm needs: an audience.

“What’s that?” asks the little girl.

“Just the wind,” I say.

“No, that,” she says.

Something is thumping against the house, the way the toe of a boot scuffs a bar stool. The lights flutter a couple of times, then die.

“Oy,” says the toddler.

“Oy?” I ask.

All things considered, we handle this power outage pretty well. First, the little girl begins to whimper. Then her mother begins to sob.

“Oy,” says the toddler again.

“Oy, boy,” I echo.

Wait, it gets better. Our lovely and patient older daughter, Rapunzel, comes out of the bathroom holding some sort of hair utensil. An iron? A hair defibrillator? An electric rake? She points this hair utensil at us like a six-shooter. Nobody moves.

“This thing,” Rapunzel announces, “isn’t working.”

“The power went out,” her mother explains.

“So?” says Rapunzel.

“How come the water’s on?” asks the boy.

And it becomes quickly evident that the most tech-savvy generation of all time -- the princes and princesses of the digital age -- has absolutely no idea of how electricity works.

Can we still make toast? Will the front door work? Why can’t I send this fax?

To be with an American family during a power outage is to enter some fold in the time-space continuum. It takes us back to a more basic era -- say, 1985 -- when things were simpler and you didn’t have to charge phones or check your e-mail every 20 seconds. Seem like a million years ago? It was.

“This is awful,” says Rapunzel, as if a tornado just sheared the roof.

“Dad,” says the boy.

“What?”

“Dad-dad-dad-dad-dad.”

“What?”

“I don’t know,” says the boy, “I just like saying it.”

We are now in our seventh minute of the power outage, and things have started to get a little weird. They are like the cast of “Cape Fear,” bug-eyed and a little sweaty. I’ve seen them panicky like this before. Like when we’re late to the multiplex and can’t find a parking place close to the door.

“How,” Rapunzel asks, “am I supposed to charge my cellphone, huh?”

“How am I supposed to take a bath, huh?” asks the little girl.

I explain to them that water is not run by electricity, so we will not die of dirt. We can also expect to have drinking water and green tea. Conceivably, we could survive for hours.

But because the heat is out, there are now nine people in our big lumpy bed, if you count kids and pets as people (and we often do). I figure that, with everybody together, now is a good time to review the importance of electricity in our lives and the little things we take for granted.

“Good idea, Dad,” someone says. I think it was me.

“Yeah, whatever,” says Rapunzel.

So, as the wind whistles through the attic, here is what I teach them about electricity:

(1) It is generated by the flow of electrons in what is dubbed a “circuit.”

(2) It comes into your house via three giant wires attached to the roof.

(3) When the electricity goes out, you can’t:

-- Make a milkshake

-- Straighten your hair

-- Download a song

-- Watch “Lost”

-- Charge your cellphone

-- Send a fax

-- E-mail your boyfriend about his “smokin’ hot” new haircut

“This is going to be awful,” says the little girl.

“It already is,” says Rapunzel.

I remind them that even without electricity, they can:

-- Pluck their eyebrows

-- Clip their nails

-- Stare at themselves in the mirror as if they’re in some sort of coma

-- Flush the toilet

-- Hug their dear, exhausted mother

-- Walk to the liquor store and buy their father a nice $5 cigar with what’s left of their Christmas money

I tell them that these are all worthy things, especially the last two. They represent a generosity of the human spirit. A triumph of light over darkness.

“Sure, Dad,” someone says.

A gust hits the house. A concert G, maybe an H. I feel them wiggle their sharp little toes deeper into the sheets.

Ouch.

Chris Erskine can be reached at chris.erskine@latimes.com.