“Hooray everyone, the heating is finally off!” So rejoiced a suburban mother on a recent sweet April day. With a flourish, she flicked a switch and cut the terrible flow of dollars to Washington Gas. Children rushed through the house, letting in breezes and birdsong and gusts of green pollen.
Fifteen minutes later, or so it seemed, the air had turned from fresh to moist, from spring to sudden summer, and the woman was standing before the same wall fixture as before. This time, though, she was in a defensive posture.
Before her stood a teenager, a damp-browed, indignant person who seemed unable to understand how, having cut the torrent of funds to one utility, her mother had no interest in immediately opening the spigot to another.
“It’s, like, 80 degrees in my room!” cried the overheated plaintiff.
This was probably true: Tall houses, whether large or small, are like continents; their climates vary. Still, as the mother pointed out, no one ever died of doing homework in 80-degree weather.
“It’s nice and cool on the first floor,” she went on. “Why don’t you do your homework down here?”
The teenager sighed. Any fool could see that this was a ridiculous suggestion. Where is the privacy? Where is the access to one’s comfy chair, or bed?
“Or why not try the basement? It’s positively chilly down there,” said the maddeningly thrifty parent.
“Or we could just behave like normal people and turn on the –”
Just then footfalls were heard descending slowly from the place where heat rises.
“… Air conditioning … Please …” A second teenager, this one even damper than the first, arrived in the hallway.
“Oh, come on!” the adult cried, “Where’s your pioneer spirit? The youths regarded her bleakly. They had heard this before.
“Seriously, it’s going to cool off tonight,” she went on. “There’s no point forcing the temperature down at great expense when nature will do it for us in a couple of hours.”
That observation brought a chorus that included such remarks as: “Ugh,” and “It’s too hot to concentrate,” and “This is totally uncool, literally,” and “What’s the point of having air conditioning if we’re not allowed to use it?”
A few hours later, as predicted, cool evening winds stirred the stagnant air. The grown-up felt vindicated, though she knew it was a temporary victory over her children — and Pepco. When the heat came to stay, her husband would join the chorus and the climate would change.
A friend of mine had parents like the mother in this story: New Englanders who thought it a sign of vague moral weakness to install air conditioning. For years their children, too, petitioned for something more effective than a fan. For years they resisted.
Then came the day when their by-now-adult daughters came to visit, and the thermometer in the dining room stood at 100 degrees.
“That does it!” they announced, spinning on their heels and corralling their children. “We’re going to a hotel.”
That did it, indeed: By the next time the grandchildren visited, the installers had come and the house was, as they say, totally cool.
Meghan Cox Gurdon’s column appears on Sunday and Thursday. She can be contacted at [email protected].
