Many parts of the US are getting destroyed by bad, windy storms recently. I know that they hit the North very hard a few weeks back, and yesterday, at least in the Midwest, we got crushed. I live in Saint Louis, and we were absolutely hammered by a very bad storm yesterday. It got very, very dark during the late afternoon, and then the wind started. At first, I thought, this will be a quick, passing storm, boy was I wrong. This storm lasted for a good 2 to 3 hours and it was brutal. The rain was pouring. The wind was intense. The sky stayed dark.

The absolute worst part about this storm, the power went out in our home. I have not been in a storm when the power has gone out in almost a decade. Usually when it rains hard, the power stays on and the rain passes. That was not the case yesterday. Our power went out at about 3:15pm central time, and it did not come back on until 9:30pm. We didn't even have it the worst. I know people that live in neighboring towns that power went out the same time ours did, but they didn't get their power back until 2 or 3 in the morning.

I am not here to complain about rainstorms today. I actually want to take my time to talk about how, in this day and age, miserable it would be to be "off the grid". Many people know what this term means, but if you don't, a simple explanation of being "off the grid", you don't use TV, cell phones, computers, basically no electronic devices. It's almost like living Amish. In fact, I bet the Amish thrive in rain storms and being "off the grid". But, I always thought it would be interesting and kind of cool to see what it would be like to be "off the grid" myself for a few months. Well, I can say, with authority, after only 6 and a half hours, being off the grid would be the worst.

I always feel nervous when a bad storm hits, so add on the fact that my cell phone was about to die, and I had no way to charge it. That meant, if my phone died, I would have no way to contact my wife, my in laws or my folks. That was frightening.

Secondly, the storm hit when my kids where resting. My daughter, who is nine months old, slept through it all, but my son, who is 4, was very, very scared. So, not only was I frightened by the fact that I may have no way of communicating with my wife and family, but my son's fear added to mine. He did not care for the lights being out. He is kind of afraid of the dark to begin with, and with it being as dark as it was during the day, he was terrified. He snuggled like to me like he had never before, that's how scared he was, he never snuggles up with me.

Third, this is where it will start to get trivial, but it bears referencing, we had no television or radio to listen to. Having no TV, at that time of day, totally threw us off our routine. When my son gets out of "quiet time", he gets to watch a TV show. That is what we do everyday. But, with the power out, that was off the table. My son, much like my wife and myself, thrive on consistency. When he realized he would not be watching a show, he grew even more upset. Then, the radio thing, we don't have a boom box in our house anymore because it is 2016. We haven't had a stereo in the house for about 5 years now. It's pointless because we listen to everything on our phones or our iPods. And I wasn't going to get in the car to listen to the radio because it was so terrible outside. So, another lack of communication outside.

Fourth, the fridge and the freezer were shut down. We had ice cream and frozen pizza in the freezer that could have easily thawed and been rendered useless. In the fridge, we had meat, milk, cream and a bunch of other perishable items. I was very nervous that these would all go bad and that would be like throwing cash into the trash can. We have some good pork chops and chicken breast that could have very easily gone bad had our power not come back on. I was so looking forward to my pork chop last night, but that was a no go since our fridge and stove didn't work. Fifth, we had to go out for dinner, but a bunch of places closed or had an hour wait. We spent over an hour just trying to find a place to eat when my wife got home. That's just annoying.

We got home from dinner and the power was on, but only for about 5 minutes. That was a tease. They hadn't fully fixed the problem yet, and they shut us down again at about 8:15pm. I was about to give my son a shower, but now we had to do that by candlelight. That was tough and not fun. My son was scared. I couldn't see what was going on. I was frustrated. He was scared and started to cry. It was a disaster. I also had to shower myself by candlelight, and that is a pain. It's like taking a shower with a mini strobe light. It was not ideal.

My wife and I finally got the kids to sleep right around 9pm in our very warm house. That was another problem, it was steamy in the house. We had no relief, even with the windows open. It was hot and I was sweaty, another deal breaker. But, we got the kids asleep, I showered, was getting ready for bed, then the power came back on. I felt a relief like I had never before. It was so nice to hear the AC click on, the lights power up and turn the TV back on.

That little 6 and a half hour departure from the grid was more than enough for me to not want to do more than that ever again. It all sounds nice and peachy to say that you want to live "off the grid", but I think it is just that, just a nice thought. The people that actually do it, more power to you, but it is not for me and I think it is highly overrated and kind of gone the way of the "hipster".

"Hipsters" want to do everything old school, but the problem with old school, like vinyl records, unicycles, VHS tapes and being "off the grid", everything has been updated to make it better. We have CD's and MP3 players, we have mountain bikes, we have DVD's and Blu-Ray's and we have electronics that make our lives so much easier and better.

The storm from yesterday erased any thoughts I had of trying to be "off the grid" at some point, and I think being "off the grid" is an old fashioned idea that sounds good, but is pointless and worthless. People who live "off the grid" are just as lame as "hipsters". The grid is our friend.

Ty

Ty is the Pop Culture editor for SeedSing and the other host of the X Millennial Man Podcast. His views on hipsters are very, very, clear. Follow Ty on twitter @tykulik.