All it takes to figure out how dependent we’ve become on electronic gadgets is a power outage that lasts longer than an hour or two.

Anything beyond that and panic begins to take hold.

As an aside, you’d be surprised by how often during an outage people forget that the power is out. I do, at least. I can’t even count how many times I either tried to turn on the TV or walked into the bathroom and tried in vain to flip on the light switch. It’s almost enough to make you want to flip off the power company, but I usually wait until the bill comes every month.

There’s nothing like a power outage to remind you that your cellphone is rapidly losing juice. Forget the food in the fridge or the lack of heat or air conditioning — depending on the season. If my phone dies, I won’t be able to scroll X — it’s still Twitter to me — for the latest political firestorm or the new dumb thing the Cleveland Browns just did. No cat videos on Facebook and I’ll miss that helpful text from someone in Estonia reminding me that my turnpike tolls are overdue. We don’t grip cellphones. It’s the other way around. These hand-held computers have us locked down tighter than Fort Knox.

Have you ever gone outside and started your call in the dead of winter because you couldn’t be without for any length of time? Guilty as — pun intended — charged.

But what happens when electricity isn’t a problem, but you left your household’s only charging cord at the office or — more recently — at your daughter’s house on Easter Sunday?

(If you’re reading this, Erin, drop that thing in the mail so your mother gets off my case!)

The good news is that we own so many cords that even when one is misplaced or left somewhere, I can usually find one if I look long enough. Sometimes, the cords I find actually work, too. But often, they don’t because I’m convinced that in addition to the exorbitant cost of most phones, someone is also getting rich by designing charging cords with shelf lives of approximately 17 days.

So even when you have a cord, there’s a decent chance that the next time you try to use it, nothing will happen. We’ve put men on the moon, “The View” is somehow still on TV and CNN gave Don Lemon a prime-time show, but we still have to buy a dozen or so charging cords a year if we want to stay connected to the world. Make it make sense.

On top of all that, I dropped my cellphone the other day. This isn’t news, because I’ve dropped this phone countless times during the two years I’ve had it and nothing ever happened, despite my apparent inability to buy an overpriced case.

OtterBox? I’d rather buy and domesticate an actual otter. I don’t just watch cat videos on Facebook. I also watch cute videos of otters and raccoons and occasionally “snooze” annoying people for 30 days when they junk up my feed with drivel. Sorry, not sorry.

But back to my phone. My luck ran out on this particular day. I finally broke my phone the 647th time I dropped it. Now I risk cutting my fingers every time I pick it up because a chunk is missing out of the back and the screen has a big, apparently permanent stripe of light from top to bottom on the left.

I’m about to go online to see if my provider — it rhymes with KD&D — has a deal on a new phone, even though I swore I was divorcing them when their promise to reduce my monthly bill from $260 to $205 never happened. All I lost was 90 minutes on the phone and a bunch more money.

Maybe I won’t switch carriers or get a new phone. It might just be time to unplug and be unreachable for a while. No more calls or texts while I’m on the golf course. No more interruptions at the fishing hole. No more texts from political pollsters or would-be scammers from Eastern Europe.

I like the sound of that.

Ed Puskas is editor of the Tribune Chronicle and The Vindicator. Reach him at 330-841-1786 or epuskas@tribtoday.com.