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On an unusually busy evening at a west suburban Jewel, shoppers were hit with a neighborhood power outage that darkened the store. For a few seconds, carts froze and everyone fell silent.

Then a wry voice emerged in the produce section, near the mangoes. “Uh-oh, they’re attacking.” Her companion laughed. Another five seconds of silence. Then the lights came up, and the only directive we heard was the produce sprayers telling everybody to stand back.

A passing employee laughingly called over to a colleague, “Time to evacuate!”

Who knows what to make of the nervous joking, though admittedly, my own reaction to the power outage had nothing to do with terrorism: “Great. That means the cash registers are probably down.”