A Category 6 hurricane ravaged the D.C. area on Tuesday, destroying the nation’s capital and its Virginia suburbs.
Luckily, Dominion Energy restored electricity to the leveled houses of McLean only an hour later, letting residents plug their phones into the outlets buried under the scraps of their homes. Unfortunately, the Hooked family’s house was not damaged, so they were not prioritized and were forced to remain without power for an entire day.
“I keep asking myself why we got so unlucky,” freshman I-Am Hooked said. “All my friends had the rubble of their houses to entertain them, and all I could do was sit in my safe and undamaged home with my family and pray for the Wi-Fi to come back.”
I-Am’s infant brother Al-Ready Hooked had an even more tragic day: his 146-inch Samsung TV fell directly on his crib, crushing his iPhone 14 Pro Max. Too young to speak, he declined our interview request via TikTok dance.
His mother tried to warn I-Am and Al-Ready to charge their devices when the storm began. Tragically, her text didn’t make it from the living room to the basement because the cell connection was already faulty.
“When I saw the red ‘not delivered’ message, my heart dropped,” Claire-Lee Hooked said. “I almost walked downstairs to communicate—verbally—with my kids about the storm, but then a cat video came up on my feed, and I got distracted.”
Of course, no one has ever been without devices for a whole day before, so there is inadequate research on the effects of such trauma. Still, we consulted McLean’s reverse psychology teacher Constance Gaming on the unprecedented matter.
“It is critical for your mental health to constantly stare at a screen and share every detail of your boring life on social media,” Gaming said. “Also, making eye contact, communicating face-to-face and meeting new people are sure routes to socializing issues.”
The moment the Hooked family lost power, Claire-Lee’s husband Ben Hooked remarkably only went into cardiac arrest when his game crashed. Unfortunately, it seems the only thing he can say since regaining consciousness is “it’s-a me Mario!” Luckily, since Gaming plays Super Smash Bros. 8 days a week, he was able to interpret Ben’s words.
“He says he saw the roof fly off his neighbor’s house and that he was so scared he looked out the window—into the outside world—and realized the house was completely flattened,” Gaming said. “Realizing he didn’t pause his game, he rushed back to his monitor, but the screen was black, and it wouldn’t turn back on. It was at that moment he realized his house had tragically lost power.”
His neighbor Anne Addict, who sat in what used to be her living room, was devastated when she looked up from her phone for the first time in eight hours and saw the Hooked family eating a meal together, holding conversation rather than watching YouTube on their respective devices.
“The Hooked family aren’t the only ones suffering around here,” Anne Addict said. “I couldn’t even take photos of the devastation because when my house collapsed a wooden beam struck my child and—more importantly—cracked my phone’s camera.”
Dominion Energy finally restored the Hooked family’s power 22 painful hours after their neighbors. Sadly, almost a whole day with no internet had already dealt serious damage to the family’s social status.
“Once our friends started seeing the damage from the storm in the news, our reputation of living a perfect suburban life was jeopardized,” Claire-Lee said. “In the past few days, we’ve been posting twice as often, so our friends on social media—mainly people who we barely know—still understand that their lives are miserable and ours are better.”
Now, the Hooked family is seeking to repair its life one Instagram post at a time.
