Nowadays there are many things we enjoy and take them for granted. One of them is the electricity, but can you imagine how your life would be without it? Note I'm not talking of just a brief power outage.

Our homes and lives have become so dependent on electricity that it is really hard to imagine how everything would change without it. What will we do for entertainment? There won't be movie theaters, televisions, CD players, or computers. How we will save the meat and the food in general? How will we cook a meal if even the gas stove has an electric ignition?

When I was five-years-old, my grandma used to live in a small rural town in Peru. There was no electricity there. I liked to visit her and I used to enjoy the time that I spent with her because for a child there were a lot of things to do, but when I remember how my grandma used to live, I give thanks to Thomas Edison for inventing the electricity.

To keep the meat for long periods of time my grandma put salt on it and then hung it in the sun for curing. For leftovers, she used to boil it so it could be good for the next day.

To eat fresh meat she needed to go to her own yard, catching and killing and cleaning, all by herself. For entertainment, my aunts and uncles learned to play musical instruments, so everybody could dance. Possibly the invention of electricity has caused us to be less creative.

When the night came, my grandma used to light a couple of Kerosene lamps. One lamp was in the kitchen where my grandma was making dinner and the other one in the living room where some of her daughters were listening to music on a radio that worked with batteries. The radio only could be on for one hour because the batteries were too expensive.

When dinner was ready, everybody went to the dining room. It was my favorite time. Everybody talked about how their days were and told stories and legends.

Possibly the invention of electricity has caused us to be less creative but it has made our lives easier.