Get Your Paws Off, Thermo-STAT

During an extremely cold winter, my area has an energy crisis. Our energy company asks all their customers to not heat their houses above sixty-five degrees Fahrenheit (eighteen degrees Celsius) via phone notification. So, like a dutiful citizen, I resign myself to sweaters and turn the thermostat from seventy to sixty-five.

Here’s where the fun begins. I’m still in my mid-teens, but I have the power to access alerts and the smart thermostat via my smartphone. Anyone with the app and permission can change the thermostat setting without even going near the physical device.

It’s hardly a day before the thermostat goes back up to seventy, so I get back on the app and turn it back down to sixty-five. It’s a little too cold to be comfortable, but that’s what the energy company wants. Then it goes back up to seventy. I change it to sixty-five again.

This back-and-forth goes on for over a week. Then, one night at dinner, the topic of the thermostat comes up and my dad starts griping about the ever-changing temperature.

Dad: “I’m trying to keep it at seventy but it keeps going back to sixty-five!”

It doesn’t take long to figure out what’s happening, so I immediately confess. My father looks like he’s in disbelief and my mother starts laughing.

Mom: “He’s been ranting and groaning all week about Big Brother turning down his heat!”

That was when I learned that the stereotype about fathers not wanting anyone else touching the thermostat is one- hundred percent true.