Last night I came home to discover I’d left the basement light on all day. Normally I would beat myself up about it, but as I stomped down the stairs with a load of laundry, I actually considered myself rather lucky.
After all, I live alone so there isn’t anyone to lecture me about having left the light on all day. There isn’t anyone to make me feel stupid for having left the light on all day. After all, it’s not like I did it on purpose. I am the sort of person who’s rather environmentally conscious, maybe more than average. I didn’t do it on purpose; if it happens again, it won’t have been on purpose then either. I can’t go back in time and stop it from happening. In the end, I’m the one who literally has to pay for it when the electric bill comes.
The very sad part is that my father is like a dog with a bone when something like this happens. If it had been his basement, he would just be going on and on about the waste and demanding to know why you did it and what were you thinking. Well, clearly you had other things on your mind at the time. My poor mother and even his poor mother who lives with them are ever at his mercy if the coffee pot gets left on or a light in a room someone isn’t in at the moment is left on. And sadly, he’s even done it to me at my own house with my own lights.
Which is probably why I was beating myself up over leaving my basement light on all day when there was nothing I could have done about it and really why do I want to make me feel guilty about it? I don’t like it when he does it; why would I want to continue that tradition now that he’s a gazillion states away?
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My dear, sweet mother is freakish like your father. She gets all bent out of shape about leaving lights on. The two should meet and compare notes…
It takes him 15 minutes to leave the house to go anywhere. Everyone has to be in the car and then he goes back inside to check all the lights and the coffee pot and the stove, etc.