Fannin’ Those Flames
& other strategies to bridge marital AC divide
Week of December 7th to December 13th, 2021.
You and your husband both loathe the summer. The summertime temperature of your home is a contentious subject. I don’t normally like to define anything by borders, but the perspectives you each hold about how a home should feel in the summer can (in this case) be best predicted by your passports.
Your husband has two passports, and his European passport is the one guiding him when he viciously attacks the virtues of air conditioning. Like all EU passport holders, your husband claims that he is “allergic” to air conditioning—an affliction apparently so beyond alleviation that the best defense is to live in sweltering misery for one quarter of his life.
You, however, cherish air conditioning. Your American passport squeals with delight at the thought of transforming your apartment into a frigid nightmare. What could be better than never needing to acknowledge the conditions of the outdoors or the world around you?
Every other European sensibility your husband has brought to the table has improved your life immensely. You, on the other hand, have brought nothing but culturally polluted madness to the table (the table of love). Since your husband lived in this country 12 years prior to loving you, the only elements of American culture he missed out on were ones he had no interest in ever knowing in the first place. Without your loving intervention, he might never have learned about the Hokey Pokey, what one can expect from a dining experience at Red Robin, or the formative benefits of Costco pizza.
You decide to compromise. Since he collapses with anguish if an active AC unit is in his vicinity, and you refuse to live in reality (temperature or otherwise), you’ve met in the middle and populated your home with the robust chorus of fans. Getting a bigger head start than most on Summer 2022 prep, this week you’ll call an electrician to hang two more ceiling fans in your wind tunnel compromise of a home.
Everything seems in order when the electrician arrives. He assesses the job: hanging two ceiling fans and a pendant lamp you threw in for the hell of it. He asks if you’d like the pendant light connected to the lightswitch across the room. He asks this like a waiter might ask which side you’d like with your meal—Fries? Or a salad? Just as the obvious answer to that question is Fries, the obvious answer to his question was Wow, yes, we’d love the pendant lamp connected to the switch, thank you.
The electrician assures you that this is no problem, it couldn’t be an easier process, and he gets to work. You both work from home, so you do too. You mostly don’t take notice of what is happening in the other room. Another electrician joins the first, but other than that you aren’t really aware of the goings on. When you stop for lunch, you’re a little surprised that four hours in, nothing has changed, but you respect their process, and remain silent due to your knowledge that you know nothing about this field.
This is…the wrong approach. Normally I would be supportive of your little stroke of self awareness, allowing you to see that you know the least in the room about electricity (the skies have long suspected you do not know how a lightbulb works, not really anyway), but as you’ll see soon, Virgo, this hands off approach simply will not cut it.
Sometimes it’s important to ask questions like, Approximately how long will this take? or When this job is over will the ceiling still have nine gaping holes in it, or Is this electrical work going to be more expensive than dental surgery?
If you would have asked those questions, and if you’d received honest answers, the answers would have been: 13.5 hours, of course—those big ceiling holes are here to stay, and yes.
You had hired an electrician to hang two other ceiling fans and another pendant lamp a year or so ago, and he charged you $550. When you spoke to the current electrical company, you got the impression the price would be similar, however as the hours go by you’ll start to worry that the bill will be more than you anticipated.
One electrician appears to be training the other, and you can tell this is partly responsible for the slower speed. Like an idiot, you think to yourself that you are happy they feel good enough in your space to work at such an imperceptible pace. You are relieved to have cultivated a home environment where one electrician can train another electrician without even asking you whether or not you have dinner plans, or ever need to leave your house again.
After seven hours of two electricians in your house, you can’t help but notice that neither ceiling fan is out of the box, and that your ceiling is full of gaping, unmended holes. You, again, assume you do not know how electricity processes work, and keep minding your own business. Though the sun has now long gone down, you're still hopeful that three lights and two sets of blades will soon be rising. You worry aloud to your husband, “What if this ends up being like, $1,000?”
At this time, you believe a $1,000 bill would be the worst possible outcome.
I don’t like to spoil too much of the future, Virgo, but I can tell you that your bill will not end up being $1,000. Instead, after nine hours of two electricians being in your home to install three devices, you’ll be presented with a bill for $3,400, and a promise that they’ll finish up the job “sometime tomorrow.” They give you the option to pay then, or the next day, and from the echo-y chamber of your simultaneous, shock inspired mental collapse, you manage to communicate that Yes, you’d prefer to pay the bill tomorrow, thank you.
You’ll spend the rest of the night absolutely foaming at the mouth with panic. Neither of you sleep well, and occasionally run into each other in the middle of the night to swap unhinged theories about how this could possibly be the amount it costs to have two ceiling fans and a pendant lamp installed.
As soon as their shop opens the next morning, you call. You’ve worked yourselves up so much about the injustice of this that you will genuinely expect the office to say, “Wow, our bad, that shoulda been four hours and $600” but no such admission will arrive. Instead, you’re told that “the price of wire has gone up” and they send over two new electricians, who take turns absolutely roasting the job done by the previous two.
The owner of the company also stops by, and very nicely tells you that $3,400 is simply what it costs to have two ceiling fans and a pendant lamp installed. However, he says he’ll work something out with you, since the “fries or salad” electrician neglected to tell you that the fries would be $3,000 more than the salad.
As of this writing Virgo, as far into the future as I can see you won’t hear from this company. I think they found your shock so annoying that they’ll need some time away from you. Is this rate more expensive than friends who have had electricians help them with full home remodels? Yes. Is this more money than you got when you sold your car? Yes. Is this more money than you’ve spent on improv classes in your adult life? Probably not :(
I encourage you to take this as an opportunity to become more assertive, Virgo. You do not have to be all knowing or silent, you can ask questions! The version of yourself you are when making a todo list? Bring her into the mix next time! That go getter would have gladly asked helpful, clarifying questions! After all, this could have all been avoided if you would have simply asked, “Will it be $3,000 more to have this light attached to a switch?”
The Skies Insist:
That you listen to Elias Rahbani’s song, Dance of Maria. This joyfully disorienting banger is the perfect accompaniment for a marital dispute over the merits of air conditioning.