{"version":1,"type":"rich","provider_name":"Libsyn","provider_url":"https:\/\/www.libsyn.com","height":90,"width":600,"title":"Turn Off the Lights","description":"I say it all the time: "Turn off your lights when you leave your room!" It's yet another way I've become my father.  --------------------------------- I heard myself say it and I could hear my father\u2019s voice coming out of my mouth as it happened. \u201cPlease turn off your lights when you leave your bedroom,\u201d I said to my teenage son. \u201cThere is no need to leave those lights on if there\u2019s no one in there. Ceiling fan, too. Turn it off or I\u2019m taking money out of your allowance.\u201d I remember as a child my father saying this to me. As I\u2019d leave for my walk to school every morning, my parents would pester me to turn off the lights. They\u2019d remind me that electricity costs money and replacing light bulbs does, too. I\u2019d shake my head and roll my eyes and wish my parents would worry about things that really mattered, not about light bulbs and a little bit of electricity. One of my neighborhood friend\u2019s father worked for Alabama Power back in the day and I remember the father telling me that the cost to run an one-hundred watt light  bulb for a day was about fifty cents or something like that. And I\u2019d remind my parents of that as I made a huff about turning around, going back into my bedroom, and turning off the lights. Well, I have now become my father in yet another way. I now remind my own children, and one child in particular, to go back and turn off their lights when they leave their room. Whatever light is on, if they\u2019re leaving their bedroom for any reasonable amount of time, turn it off. It\u2019s a waste of money, I say, to light an empty room. Besides that, the power rates are higher in Alabama than average and the LED bulbs that I buy to replace the old bulbs cost a good bit more, too. These new LED light bulbs are impressive with how little electricity they use and how long they\u2019ll last, by the way. It\u2019s somewhat strange to know that at my age of fifty-three years old I\u2019m buying light bulbs that could very well outlive me. I tell my children that these light bulbs are the only inheritance they\u2019ll get from me so treat them well. These light bulbs will be my memory. However, my urgings and reminders and pestering and threats do little to get my kids to turn their lights off. Nothing I do or say works. My wife reminds me that they\u2019re teenagers and their brains are full of hormones and random thoughts and confusion and it\u2019s just a jumble in their heads at this age. She says I need to give them a break. My reply is that there doesn\u2019t appear to be anything at all going on in their heads these days if they\u2019re incapable of simply remembering to turn off their lights. Which is, I\u2019m guessing, exactly what my father said about me about forty years ago. I\u2019m Cam Marston and I\u2019m just Trying to Keep It Real. ","author_name":"Keepin' It Real with Cam Marston","author_url":"https:\/\/cammarston.com\/keepin-it-real-with-cam-marston\/","html":"