Lights On. Lights Off.

I'm old. Well, I'm not really that old, especially if my life expectancy turns out to be "almost 103" like my maternal grandmother. I'm old enough now that I feel like I’ve crossed over to the stage of my life where I can say to my kids, “Well, when I was your age, I did _insert_some_comparison_here,” but definitely don’t say “walked three miles to school in the snow while barefoot.”

Actually, come to think of it, a few times when I missed the bus, I did walk from my high school to home or from home to my high school. The high school was at least three or four miles from my house. While I wore shoes, I think that walking that far at that point in my life probably made me feel like I was walking barefoot through a swarm of locusts on a 98 degree day with 80% humidity. (Is that forecast possible, WeatherGirl Brenda?!)

I spent a good part of my youth in the 1970s. While dinosaurs didn’t roam the Earth then, we were a tad prehistoric not having the Internet, cell phones (with the much despised-by-me call waiting), or, thank God, Justin Bieber. With the exception of disco, which I liked but only because I liked to shake my groove thing, the 70s had some great music if you forget the likes of Disco Duck and the Pina Colada Song and remember most of these.

Everyone had a job never even thinking of asking their parents for money, everyone pitched in for gas never even thinking of asking their parents for gas money, and a fantastic Saturday night was wolfing down a few bags of M&Ms while watching Saturday Night Live with a few friends and without parents present. Okay, even back then, parents were personas non grata the minute you hit your teens.

I was 8 in 1970, and I was 17 in 1979. I cannot really tell you much about many of the current events that occurred during that time (well, I could if you gave me a few hours) other than the energy crisis, which seemed to affect me from January 1, 1970 to December 31, 1979. And, as far as fashion went, I can tell you that I wore sweater vests, maxi skirts, bell bottoms, and Fair Isle sweaters!

It’s easy for most to look back and see the wonderful qualities your parents gave you via DNA. Besides genetics, it’s probably also easy to pinpoint certain “life lessons” your parents taught you. My parents taught me to how easy it was to be cold yet stay warm, consume yet reuse, and see the light yet while keeping it mostly dark.

If there was a Heat Miser, then I am the Energy Miser when I’m not the Recycle Miser. My vigilance began in my youth; my Mom and my Dad made me this way, and I am glad that they did. My Mom was a recycler long before it was cool to be “green;” today, I cringe when I am at a friend’s house and a glass bottle goes into the trash.

My Dad kept the house at a toasty 65 degrees during the day and at an even toastier 62 degrees at night. I love to tell people that my electric blanket was my first boyfriend. He was a good boyfriend, who hugged me and kept me warm with no chance in hell of ever getting me pregnant!

When I was in high school, my Mom worked as a nurse; she worked 7 to 3pm, so her car was gone at 6am. If I wanted a car during the day, I was at my Dad’s mercy because he only worked a few minutes away, so I could drive him to work. But, if I wanted his car, there was a price to pay.

During a portion of the 1970s, you actually had to wait in line, long lines, to fill your car with gas. If I wanted to borrow my Dad’s car, I had to fill his puke green Gran Torino with gas, which was not a typically difficult task. The only thing was that I had to get up at 6am, drive two miles to the closest gas station, and then wait in line for an hour just so I could drive a few friends to Friendly’s after school.

Doing that then, I thought I was being asked to walk across burning coals. When I look back at it now, my Dad, who worked full-time like my Mom, was just asking me to contribute as a family member. He paid for the tank of gas, but I make the tank of gas a possibility; it was a family affair.

Sufficed to say, when I’m not a product of Richard and Ruth, I’m a product of the Energy Crunch of the 1970s. If a light was left on in the upstairs bathroom, we’d hear my father roar, “Who left the light on in the upstairs bathroom?” We’d all look at each other, wondering who was going to have to go all the way upstairs to turn off the light. When a confession was made, my Dad would say, “Go back upstairs and turn off that light!”

Though, there was that one time when my Dad roared, “Who left the light on in the upstairs bathroom?” I think my sister, Julie, and I were the only ones around. After looking at each other, we silently came to the same conclusion.

There was no confession coming from the two girls sitting on the couch watching TV in the family room. We both knew who had left the light on, but did either of us have the guts to say it? Julie moved her mouth to speak, and I yelled “Noooooo!" but unfortunately no sound came out of me.

Julie said quite matter of fact, “Dad, you did.” Of course, while Julie had the guts to confess for my father, she suffered his “Do as I say not as I do” wrath and was asked, err, very nicely to go upstairs and turn out the light in the bathroom anyway. Julie got a 10 for guts and a 1 for “Thou should never tell thy father he's at fault.”

Anyway, when I bought my first house on my own, I realized shortly after moving in during the middle of the Winter that I had become my parents. I didn’t start eating bridge mix like my Mom nor did I develop a sudden urge to become a philatelist. I did however become frugal where it came to energy.

Nathan’s “I’m cold” thrust was met with my “Put a sweatshirt on” parry. When I caught my boyfriend pressing the up arrow on the thermostat while dressed in shorts and a t-shirt in the middle of February, I said, “Dress properly and don’t be laying a finger on my thermostat!” Jeez, a good portion of people today, if jettisoned back to the 1790s, would never survive. I would and at night time, it would be a three-cat night, err, just like it is now.

Recently, I’ve begun to realize that while I preach conservation, my children aren’t getting the hang of practicing it. I came home the other day and went to throw something away. Nathan had thrown three plastic bottles in the trash. Of course, if this was one of the worst things he did, I know I should count myself lucky, and I did.

I grabbed the bottles out of the trash, headed upstairs, and I found Nathan. I held the bottles up and began to wave them to divert his attention from his X-box controller to the Polyethylene Terephthalate I had in my hands. I sighed and said, “Nathan, you can recycle these! It’s number four!”

He looked up and said, “Uh-huh.” I said, “Put these in the recycle bin, okay?” He said, “Uh-huh.” I was lucky; at least his response was a bit more of a respectful acknowledgement than Iz's “Okay, okay, okay!”

It snowed several inches here yesterday. Iz had a snow day, and since her Dad was finally home, I had a “Go to work and work in peace and quiet day.” After I got ready for work, I went to kiss her good-bye.

I saw that the door to her room was closed, which could only mean one thing. She had cat hostages. I opened the door, and I was right.

She was lying on her bed and had a choke hold on Plume. I exclaimed, “Iz!” I then exclaimed a second time when I saw that her bedroom window was wide open. If we had lived in Florida, I wouldn’t have had an issue; however, since it was 30 degrees outside, I said, “Close the window. The heat is on!”

She still didn’t release her death-grip on Plume. I slammed the window shut. I said, “Iz, that is a waste of energy!”

She looked at me like I had just told her that there was no Santa Claus; I needed to tell her that there was an environmental clause which said that someday all this great heat might be gone. Iz said, still holding on tight to Plume, “I’m hot.” I said, “Well, take a cold shower,” which is something I always expected to say to a man but not to my daughter!

When I arrived home from work yesterday, I noticed that the house was lit up like a Christmas tree. This surprised me given there were only two people home and not twenty. Who was having the party?

When I was inside, I noticed that Iz was in the family room. I brought my things upstairs, hoping to find the other 19 people that were in my house. I scanned the hallway, the bedrooms, and the bathroom; there were no signs of life except for the large dust kitty that blew by my foot when I pushed my bedroom door all the way open.

Iz was afraid of the dark, and at her age, I understood that. For Iz, this meant that when she was upstairs by herself that every light needed to be on, even in unoccupied rooms like Nathan’s and in the bathroom. To add insult to conservation injury, she wasn’t even upstairs.

I yelled “Iz!!!!!’ She yelled, “What??????” I said, “Come up here, please!”

She asked, “Am I in trouble?” I laughed and said, “Nooooo!” She sighed and I heard her stomp through the hallway, stomp up the stairs, and when she arrived at the top of the stairs, she said, “What????” in a peeved tone, indicating she was missing an “iCarly” episode she had seen only seven times.

I said, “When you’re not upstairs, turn off the lights. You’re wasting energy by keeping the lights on when they don’t need to be.” She looked totally uninterested and said, “Okay.” There probably would have been two more utterances of “Okay” if she had only seen the “iCarly” episode in question twice.

She asked, “Can I go now?” I had already turned off most of the lights, but I left the one on in Nathan’s room for illustrative purposes. I said, “No” and walked over to Nathan’s room.

I said, “Look,” as I flipped the switch off, “The lights don’t need to be on in a room when no one is in it.” Feeling dramatic probably due to an excess of hormones, I flipped the switch on and then off and then on and off again as I said, “On. Off. On. Off. Lights should be off when no one is around.” Being an 80s movie buff, I had an flashback to “The Karate Kid.” Not only was I turning into my parents but my “Lights on. Lights off” speech had turned me into Mr. Miyagi!

I looked at Iz. She looked at me like I was crazy. I realized in that moment that I, Energy Miser, had now been cached in her memory, as the one who had made her come all the way upstairs to learn how to, duh, turn a light switch on and off ruining that episode of "iCarly."

She then said, “Okay, okay, okay!” I, being slightly peeved and again dramatic said, “Tub, tub, tub!” Iz got a 10 for “Sassy 7-Year-Old Attitude” and she got a 1 for “Don’t forget who's the boss of you!”

Once I got her in the tub, I went downstairs to get a drink. I came up 5 minutes later. The light was on in Nathan’s room.

I went into the bathroom and sighed. I asked, “Iz, why’s the light on in Nathan's room?” She smiled and quickly and defensively said, “Liam was in there, and he couldn’t see!!!!!”

Okay, she got me. I realized that my lights-out rule had to be amended to be more specific about who “no one” was. I went to Nathan’s room and turned off the light doubting if Liam had ever even been in Nathan's room.

I knew schooling Iz on energy conservation was going to take a while. Though, all I had to do was glare at the toys all over the bathroom floor ten minutes later, and she went right in and picked them all up; it would always be about baby steps in different directions. But, that was all about her growing up and all about me growing into what my parent's DNA had made me and the lessons they taught me best. ♥