Warming Up
"Why is it always so cold in here?" I said, aiming my voice in the direction of my parents.
"It's only 68," was the invariable response from one of them. "That's room temperature." I couldn't understand why they kept the house so cold in the winter, 68 degrees during the day, 66 at night. "It's more economical to keep the house at this temperature," my dad would tell me. How much money could it cost to heat the house a few degrees more?
Even though I was sure our finances would not suffer if we used more heat, I never thought of my family as rich. Rather, by comparing my family with some of my friends' families, I thought we were comparatively poor. We never had many luxuries; even our house was spartan. A few years ago, my dad and stepmom bought a plot of land in a new subdivision and designed a house. After it was built, it was obvious that we had the plainest house in the cul-de-sac. It was a one-story house with conservative beige siding and absolutely nothing fancy to make it stand out.
