An Old Memory

One evening a couple of years ago, the power went out at my house. At the time only my sister and I were home.

My sister was no more than 12 years old when this incident occurred and she was still afraid of the dark.

Like most kids with nyctophobia, my sister screamed in fear as soon as the lights went off.

"The power's out!!!" she shrieked, as if I didn't notice how pitch-black the house had become.

My sister began running frantically down our hall [with no lights] to get to my room. Apparently, the power outage impaired her common sense.

She ended up running into the wall.

Upon hearing her frail little frame thud against the wall with enough force to cause her pain, I did nothing a big sister should have done. I didn't bother to check if she was okay, to console her, to get her some ice, to give her a flashlight... All my mind told me was that this was funny, and then it told me to laugh. So I laughed and said, "I heard that."