I thought President-elect Barack Obama was the ultimate model of cool during Friday's power outage when he politely declined assistance from local authorities and put his family to bed in the dark before resuming his vacation in the morning.

Then I got a call from 82-year-old Carol Colley of Mililani, who displayed a gift for understatement when she said, "I have a funny story to tell you."

She spent the night kind of like taco filling — and, remarkably, was able to find humor in a very uncomfortable situation.

Colley is bedridden and uses an electric bed that allows her to raise the head and foot ends for comfort, much like a hospital bed.

"I've gotten so small — I only weigh about 88 pounds now — that when I raise the back, I have to also raise the front to wedge myself in or I'll slide all over the place," she said.

It leaves her in a "V" position that gives her back a good stretch for short periods, but gets uncomfortable if she has to stay that way for any length of time.

And wouldn't you know, that was exactly the position she was in when the power went off. Without any manual controls to adjust the electric bed back to flat, she was stuck that way from 6:30 p.m. until electricity was restored in the morning.

"I was in there pretty tight and it was impossible to sleep folded up into a 'V' except for very short periods, so it was a long night until the electricity came back on," Colley said. "The cats seemed pretty amused by the whole thing."

Colley's son lives next door in the duplex they share and brought her candles and other supplies.

"There wasn't much else he could do," she said. "I was in there pretty good and even if he took me out, I'm bedridden and there was no place else to put me. He had his girlfriend he had to take care of."

So she spent the night mostly awake in the company of the two cats, finding humor in her predicament from the perspective that comes not only from age, but also from an adventurous life in which this wasn't even close to the worst pickle she's been in.

Colley grew up in Mexico — "I speak the language like a native" — and has lived all over the Mainland and in more exotic places like Alaska, Guam and Panama, listing work for the Air Force and the Panama Canal Co. among her jobs. She's seen far worse storms and blackouts than this.

"Actually, I've always enjoyed storms," she said. "I love looking out at a good thunderstorm."

She fell in love with Hawai'i the first time she saw the Islands more than 50 years ago, and she and her husband moved here to live on O'ahu and Maui four different times — most recently 2 1/2 years ago when she came to Mililani from Colorado.

"We were experienced sailors," she said. "The first time I came here in 1956, I crewed on a sailboat across the South Pacific and then on another sailboat to Hawai'i."

Which explains why she was able to keep in such good humor while folded up in the dark like a chalupa. Rich memories of a life well-lived make the rough times slide by.

"I've had a fantastic life," Colley said. "I've done a lot of things that a lot of women didn't have a chance to do. That's what I thought about."

David Shapiro, a veteran Hawai'i journalist, can be reached by e-mail at dave@volcanicash.net. His columns are archived at www.volcanicash.net. Read his daily blog at blogs.honoluluadvertiser.com.