My Streetlight
Anyway, I am writing these lines because I want to talk about a streetlight. The streetlights on my street are old, too old and not very tall. In some of them, the light works intermittently, in fact, I can turn it on or off, if I hit the streetlight with my heel like doing a karate kick, the light will almost certainly turn on or off because of the jolt. On the other hand, there are some very hypersensitive streetlights that with just a light touch with the elbow it could turn on or off. The most brutal experience I had with a streetlight was when I was a teenager; one night, while walking drunk with my friends back home, I took the bar of the streetlight with my hands as if to strangle it and began to forcefully move it back and forth until we could clearly see that the top of the streetlight fell and hit on the pavement. Things to forget.
The fact is that in front of my bedroom window I have one of the streetlights whose light does not work properly. One night, while I was bored, I began to take notice of a progression of flashlights from the streetlight, I realized that they were not flashlights randomly at all, in fact, it was a round of repetitions; three short consecutive flashlights, one short only, then one short, one long and two short consecutive, and then three long consecutive. I memorized the sequence of flashlights and opened my laptop, looked up the Morse encryption, I couldn't believe what I found out, the streetlight was saying the word "hello" all night, I was absolutely blown away. However, after a while, I thought it was just a simple coincidence. I went to bed thinking it was funny, nothing more.
I almost forgot about the occurrence, when one night that I was at my escritoire with nothing to do again, I began to see how the streetlight was blinking again. Another round of signs of flashlights, this time shorter than last time; one short, two long and one short, then two short, then one long, I deciphered it again on my laptop, it meant "Pit", my nickname. I turned off the laptop thinking it was absurd that it made sense, there is no way a streetlight is speaking to me in Morse encryption. The last thought that came to me before going to bed was just "stop the paranoia, please, it is impossible."
A few weeks later, in the middle of winter, it was around 10 at night when I returned to my house, I saw that all the streetlights were off, I asked my mother about that, she told me that the streetlights would be restored by new ones, I thought that it would be good if that way it becomes better the type of the light. After a quick dinner, I sat at my escritoire, suddenly the streetlight in front of my window came on, in the first place, I had spent a few seconds assimilating what was happening, it was the only streetlight that worked, then, I remembered the crazy idea that the streetlight speaks to me in Morse encryption, actually, the streetlight started pointing again, I couldn't believe it, I typed the progression and then I looked on my laptop what it meant, it meant "goodbye Pit". Then I understood that it was not a coincidence, it was real, the streetlight was talking to me, I was very excited and quite agitated. The streetlamp went out again. I didn't know what to do, I couldn't tell anyone, would anyone believe it? In fact, I couldn't do anything, well, maybe ...
I decided to say something nice to him using Morse encryption too, so I got an encryption progression from my computer and then I made the sign to it using my escritoire light, I said "I'll miss you" twice, then the streetlight turned on again, the light was brighter than ever, couldn't believe that a simple light bulb could make such a powerful light, you could see the whole street clearly with a single streetlight. I was with a pencil and paper ready to write the encryption that it gave me, I did, and the last flashlight of light was even more powerful, then the streetlight went out forever, its last words were "keep my light in your mind Pit, I love you." I don't know how I fell asleep, I guess the great excitement left me knocked out.
When I woke up the sun had already risen, I remembered everything about the streetlight, so I went to the window and saw that a truck was full of old streetlights, my streetlight was in the truck, leaving, then I felt tears running down my cheeks.
Toni Font, Aberdeen, 03/07/2019
