I’m in my fifties and my dad has been gone several years now.

Still, there are these interesting characteristics that I see in myself that reminds me of him. One of those times I catch it is when I get on my kids about the heating and cooling usage in our home. I get really frustrated when I find my kids yanking around the thermostat. Coming home to a house that has been cooled to the low 70’s all day when it’s a hundred degrees outside can make me crazy. When I try to get across to my kids just how wasteful that is, they tend to look at me as though I’m just nuts. To them, heating and cooling is some sort of preordained right and not a privilege we get to enjoy. This too makes me a bit nuts because having children who think they are entitled to stuff that is actually a privilege is concerning. It certainly wasn’t that way for me when I was growing up in my dad’s house. This was a guy that grew up without any sort of modern residential HVAC. There was a wood stove in the winter for heating and all the breeze you could get for air conditioning in the summer. So the fact that our house had quality heating and air with a residential HVAC system was a very big deal to him. And that man was really on top of where the thermostat setting was. You moved the thermostat at your peril. Shoot, I don’t even think my mom moved the thermostat much. That’s sure a far cry from where I am with my own kids. Perhaps I should go old school dad on them and put the fear of God in them when it comes to the thermostat.

heater

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