ethoughts weekly- Issue 156

April 8, 2007

Happy Easter!

Thermostat

In the early 1980s my family had a 1973 Dodge Charger Special Edition. It looked a lot like the General Lee from The Dukes of Hazard. Sometimes my brother and I would pretend the doors were welded shut, and we’d climb in through the windows. I would pretend to be Luke Duke, so I could drive, of course. My brother would have to be content to holler, hang on, and yammer about Boss Hogg and Rosco P. Coltrane, as he played the role of Bo Duke. Within the world of our wild imaginations, I’d kick up billows of dust as I’d swing The General around the back roads of Hazzard County, and jump over rivers, to foil our pursuers.

Our version of the Charger was actually an olive green two-door V-8, with a scratchy textured green polyester interior. It had the unusual triple oval “opera windows”, as enthusiasts call them, on either side, surrounded by white vinyl that continued onto the roof. Our “green bomber” backfired a lot, got eight or so highway miles to the gallon, and it took a long time to heat up the cabin in the winter. In that case, our Dodge edition wasn’t that “Special”.

It took so long to heat up, that usually we got to where we were going before we got warm. To this day, my first reaction when I'm in a cold car, especially while traveling as a passenger, is to simply attempt to warm myself up. It is not natural for me to think to adjust the car’s climate control, or even to think about asking the driver to turn up the heat. All those years of dealing with a certain condition, conditioned me to react a certain way in a certain kind of environment.

Last night, as I climbed the stairs to go to bed, I noticed the second floor seemed five to ten degrees warmer than the downstairs. It was pleasant surprise. A few days prior, outdoor temperatures had been pleasant, mild and spring-like, but recently it was snowy and cold. The cozy upstairs was welcome warmth. I crawled into bed. About three hours later I awoke to a sweltering heat. It was tropical actually. I was roasting. It felt eerily like we were being baked in our beds, and it was easily over 90 degrees.

I woke up my husband as I pushed aside thoughts of our kids smothering in their beds.

“Did the power outage trip the thermostat, or something? It’s too hot. It’s way too hot. I’m going to die like this,” I said.

“No,” he answered groggily. “It’s on a battery.” He wasn’t as roasted as much as I was quite yet, but sensed something was wrong, and staggered out to investigate.

I had the fleeting thought that a giant might find me appealing if I had a dollop of sour cream on me plus butter, salt, pepper, chives, bacon bits, and I was wrapped in foil, of course. In England, they don’t call baked potatoes, “baked potatoes”, they call them “jacket baked potatoes”. If you say you want a “baked potato”, they seem confused, if not, sort of upset. It’s like they assume starch should be dressy. “Of course, it needs a jacket, you clod!” I was feeling woozy, baked, and quite jacketless.

Tim checked the thermostat and found the battery dead. The default setting must have been set to “SUN”. The furnace was burning away like mad. I opened our bedside window, but felt no cool air for better than five minutes. The heater was pumping out so much heat even the snow flakes blowing in didn’t make a difference at first. With oil the price it is, that was an expensive battery failure.

I wondered if Tim hadn’t been there to unlock the thermostat box, check the gauge, take out the failed batteries, find new batteries, and reset the whole mechanism, (which all took twenty minutes or more,) if I would have just sweltered for hours. Would I have just opened the windows? How long would I have endured all that heat? Would I have chalked it up to a battery problem or something else?

How often do we fail to adjust things in our environment, simply because we’ve been well trained otherwise? Conditioned. We sort of become willing victims. We grow to become accomplices to our own forms of disadvantage. We then agree and shake hands with discomfort, and climate discomfort is the very least of our worries. If it were just that, things would be grand. But it's not a room temperature issue. We put up with various abuses, troubles, lies, egos, unkindness, insincerity, and much more. We do, not because we are being kind, and we are mature and gracious people, (which are very admirable goals,) but because we are simply use to it. We are conditioned and well trained to not notice. Or to not take inventory, or to not ask the kinds of questions that illicit change. We are well trained to not take the right steps to engender a more productive situation. We don’t want to do the work sometimes either. So we swelter, or we freeze, or some violent swinging combination of the two.

Sometimes, the batteries need to be changed in the thermostats in our lives because the dial has been tripped, or the batteries have failed, and the gauge is blinking. It reads “SUN”, and the internal workings of our hearts can’t keep up at that burning pace. Maybe your heart is running at a fiery pace like our furnace was last night, or maybe it’s more sluggish like our old green bomber Special Edition Dodge Charger. Either way, I know this, our hearts are a true “special edition” worth looking out for. What does your thermostat really read? Is it time to get out of bed, look at the dial, and maybe change the batteries?

Blessings &

May Spring come soon!

Lisa DeLay

©2007