You know it well. Your grand parents would constantly tell you this. Whenever something was done in excess, this was what they would throw at you. Whether it was because you had a light on a little too long or if you brought your video games to their house. It almost seemed like everything ran up your grandparents electricity bill. Below I'll cover a few of the most common scenarios in which you may have experienced.
1. Watching too much TV
I don't know about you but whenever I was inside the house a little too much my grandmother would monitor my Tv activity. The best cartoons usually came on around 3:00pm in a 2 hour block. So that meant you were in the house watching tv instead of playing outside. I could never understand why it was such a big deal. Was my presence just annoying to my grandmother? Does electricity really cost that much that I can't watch goof troop at 4 pm? As kids you are taken advantage of. Adults would knowingly use excuses like these just to get you to comply with their demands. I couldn't possibly understand how it felt to pay an electricity bill. I could only go by what they told me. Me personally, I would never tell this to any kid because consciously I know that watching tv for 2 hours will not make your electricity bill sky rocket. I'd just simply say the tv needs to rest.
2. Having too many lights o
This is completely understandable. You don't necessarily want to have lights on that you are not using. However, my grandmother's house was scary at night. During the summer, my brother and I would go visit her in Pomona for weeks on end. At dinner time we would have to eat at the table in the kitchen. We'd have the lights on in the living room and the hall just to ease our minds while we would eat. Then my grandmother or grandfather would come and turn them all off. It would look like me and my bro were having a damn romantic dinner. Now we couldn't see what was going on in the hallway or the scary ass living room with that ultra graphic statue of Jesus hanging from the wall. I guess this was their way of having us man up. I'm not too sure. But I don't see an issue with leaving two lights on for like 30 extra minutes. No biggie. It was all about control though I believe. I'm sure they knew they were bullshitting us.
3. Miscellaneous
Didn't it just seem like No matter what you did, somehow you would inadvertently find a way to run up your grandparents light bill? Running in the house? "Stop running! You're gonna run up my light bill". Listening to a Walkman a little too much? "isn't that using my electricity ? No, grandma it's not. "well turn it off because I'm gonna have to buy you new batteries if those run out and I can't afford that because my light bill is so high". Oh really now?
Last but not least..…
4. Video Games
This one used to really get on my nerves. Old folks and video games never were a a good mix. My grand parents would HATE when we would bring our video games to their house. I don't know why they hated it so. Usually we could never hook it up to the living room tv. They believed that video game systems somehow had the tendency to break tvs. So when we would bring our nintendo over, miraculously they're tvs started to act up in someway afterward. Don't forget that playing video games have the potential to make your electricity bill go up about an extra $1000.00. Maybe they were jealous of the fun we were having? Probably. I think it was because old folks were intimidated by technology. they just didn't understand it
