When my sister and I were around 7 and 8 (I think) my dad finished remodeling some attic space into the girl's room. It had rainbow wallpaper, matching pastel drawers built-in to the sloping walls, two twin size waterbeds and some dark dark blue carpet that he must've gotten on clearance or salvaged from the dumpster (ever the thrifty man). We tended to leave the light on often and since the room was out of the way it drove my dad to install a special sound activated light switch. Every 3 or 5 minutes the lights would turn off, unless we made a noise.
At night as we lay in our beds quietly reading or drawing, one or both of us would "chirp" a high pitched sound like "beep" or "booh" every few minutes to turn the light back on. Our reflexes became so automatic that the light barely flickered. Quite odd, but it solved the problem of leaving the light on. Every now and then Heather or I would come up with a new way of turning the light on, a new phrase or magic word. It was usually shortlived and soon we were back to "beeping" the light back on.
One time my aunt kept her clothes in our room while she was visiting. While changing that night, the light suddenly went off. She didn't know what to make of it, but carefully moved across the room and shoved the switch up to the top "On" position. When we came up to bed a while later, we were baffled that after a few minutes of quiet time the light didn't turn off. The switch was too tight for us to slide back down to the middle or off position, so we waited until our mom came up to say goodnight to fix it. We still found ourselves "beeping" every few minutes and then laughed at how programmed we were. One of the many unique things we experienced growing up.
5 comments:
Do you also recall "beeping" or hooting when visiting your friends or cousins in their homes?
hah! yes! I'd forgotten about that... how warped we were.... ; )
That's a funny story! I love kids :)
That is crazy times! I've never heard of such a light. But your beeping made me think of a time when we were caravaning with my parents and for some reason we just stayed on the phone for the whole trip. Since several minutes would pass during which we did not talk to each other, my mom would say, "Beep" just to let me know she was still there. Since I could hear their entire conversation, it was pointless, but still funny. Anywho . . .
Oh yes! I seem to remember playing a trick on one of our friends or cousins, some overnight guest. We were sitting in the bedroom telling a story and then just before the light went off, we got to the scary part, or the climax. Maybe I imagined it all, but I seem to remember something like that. Anyway, thanks for the little trip down memory lane! :)
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