It’s funny the admonitions from childhood that still occasionally echo in my mind. This one came to me in my morning shower. I grew up in a household of six, and was I frequently either being warned about using all the hot water or I was running around in a towel screaming “who used all the hot water?” So now in a household of two frugal adults who always have enough hot water I still watch my usage.
I am the same way about overhead lights. I still hear my dad’s “do we own the electric company?” when lights are on in unoccupied rooms. Forget the logic about LED bulbs lasting forever with little electricity, I run around turning them off. Of course, Charlie does the same before he hears me yelp from downstairs “I am down here!”
Just wondering if others of you still hear old, no longer useful, warnings in the background of your mind.
Saved By Words 
Definitely. We had only a bathtub when I was growing up which takes a lot more water than a shower. We heard this time and time again! “Since when is electricity free?” And if we left a door ajar “Were you brought up in a barn?”
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The electric light one rings in my head every time I switch one on. My dad would also say something like “Were you born in a barn?”, if I didn’t close doors after me. He was obsessed with drafts, but I never got the barn reference. I notice that Dorothy mentioned that one too, so it must have crossed the Atlantic. I still turn off lights, but no longer have to worry about drafts or hot water.
Best wishes, Pete.
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That was the first phrase that came to me as well – my gran’s “Were you born in a barn?”
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As well as gran asking if I was born in a barn whenever I left a door open, the phrase “Do you think we’re made of money?” was frequently trotted out to answer any extravagant request.
And your illustration has reminded me that somewhere I have a worktop water boiler (considerably smaller than the one pictured) leftover from our catering days.
That’ll come in useful when they all arrive at Christmas… if I can only remember where I put it after moving in here last year.
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I’m still wearing out the light switches.
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How about “You’ll poke your eye out!” said to children poking their nose? (or was that just ME?)
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Definitely, these memories become imprinted in our brains. I can’t leave a room without turning out the lights, even though we’ll run our furnace for hours.
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Yes, indeed. Mine is lights I am forever switching off despite being told that doesn’t matter today
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My father would arrive home with my mother ensconced at the rear of the house on a winter evening and immediately stomp around turnig off lights with ‘the place looks like a damned Christmas tree ‘. And the phrase that recurs is if I asked to watch TV to be told no because I’d get Square eyes.
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I am the same way about lights, and also turning down the heat.
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“Your face is going to freeze that way,” said if I was scowling or frowning.
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