Telling my kids about difficulties of being without HVAC
I’m going to take the risk of sounding like an old lady wagging her finger, but youngsters these afternoons have no idea what it was like to live before heating and air conditioning technology. I get it, it’s a generational difference and my youngsters will whine and moan for days if something ever happens to the heating and air conditioning system, but they will become truly dramatic about it and if the a/c doesn’t work they will say they are dying from the heat. So I decided to try and help them understand that there was a time before heating and air conditioning technology where people had to live their entire lives without a central heating and air conditioning system. Telling my youngsters this made them look at me like I had come from the stone age! They had no clue how I even survived. So I told them the story. I explained that back in those afternoons, people had to rely on opening windows to let in cool air, going outside and taking a swim in some cool water, some carried around hand fans, and some ate cold sweet treats and everybody did their best to stay in the shade. In the winter weeks in the olden days, people would gather around a fire or a furnace. Central heating was no such thing yet so the fireplace would only heat the room it was and the rest of the house was cold. After the story the youngsters seemed a little more appreciative, although I knew they wouldn’t understand. How could they? They had not lived it.