Every day this man comes home from work. He sets his keys down on the table, walks in to the kitchen, makes some dinner, sits down in front of the TV and watches Jeopardy. Every night he does this without fail. He may have a few nights along the way where it was delayed or maybe he burnt his dinner. But every night without fail there he is watching Jeopardy and eating his dinner. It makes him feel good, warm and comfortable, sitting there in his familiar spot as Alex Trebeck reads off each question in that stupid know-it-all attitude of his. He can feel at ease because even though Alex is a moron who is only reading the answers off the teleprompter, he knows that every night without fail Alex and the new contestants will be there trying to win money.
Well, he sits down with his yummy beef stroganoff, pulls up his dinner tray and relaxes back clicking the TV on. The announcer comes on, “This is Jeopardy!” and the man smiles feeling a warmth spread over him. He salts his dinner and just as he is about to take his first bite, the entire room goes dark. The TV shuts off, there is no sound except his own breathing. It’s a dead calm and he can almost hear his own heartbeat, his pulse rising with each second. No electrical noises, no heater pump running, the elevator out in the hall isn’t making that squeaking noise it always makes all night that he doesn’t even hear anymore he’s so used to it; it’s dead quiet.
Then as the initial shock of what happened wears off, he suddenly feels this incredibly strong uncertainty creep through him. He can almost feel the hairs on his arms beginning to rise as if he were afraid of something. He immediately realizes that he feels utterly lost without Alex Trebeck! That voice, that familiar voice of Alex telling the contestants, “No, I’m sorry that is not correct”, has been something he looked forward to every night without fail. And now that he couldn’t hear or see him, he felt as if something priceless and wholesome was being ripped from his miserable existence. He felt lonely and confused, unable to decide what to do next.
New feelings begin to invade his mind. Alex had betrayed him! How could Alex just do this? No, he reminds himself, it is not Alex’s fault. The power went out and it was beyond Alex’s control. But still he feels that maybe Alex doesn’t really want to come into his living room every night at 7pm Eastern Standard Time. Maybe Alex did at first but now Alex feels as if this is just too much for him to handle but he doesn’t want to hurt him.
The man jumps up, tears in his eyes, his beef stroganoff flying across the room and hitting the wall splattering everywhere. “God dammit! Why does this always happen to me? Why is life so cruel?!” the man cries as he folds himself into a fetal position in the corner. The feelings are entirely too real to ignore as he rocks back and fourth trying to understand what the hell he did wrong, what he maybe did or said as paranoia sets in.
He spends the entire night in that corner sobbing like a baby as morning comes and goes, and he misses work because of the power outage. When he wakes up from the maybe 2 or 3 hours of restless sleep he got lying there, he slowly walks to the bathroom and vomits.
He realizes that his entire world was based on routine! Not once during that whole time that he enjoyed Jeopardy did he stop to think of the damage he was setting himself up for in the future. All he cared about was Alex Trebeck bringing him wholesome family television every night while he ate dinner. Not once did he ever question why. It was as if his eyes had been opened and leaning over the toilet gripping the grungy rim, he leans back with a small smile on his face.
Everything was going to be alright once they got the power back on…