When my husband told me that his parents used to punish him differently than any other kid he knew, I couldn’t imagine them as being cruel or anything.
I met them and they were really nice people.
I knew all of the stories he had told me and I thought the family was a bit off, but I didn’t expect them to be mean. He told me that when he or his brothers did anything wrong, they would lock him in his room. As if being locked in his room wasn’t bad enough, they turned the air conditioning off on them. We always had air conditioning in our home. We grew up in the south and without air conditioning it would have been unbearable. I was thinking how my husband also grew up in the south and how unbearably hot and miserable he must have felt. Without air conditioning in the room, he must have felt like he was ready to die. He told me that he had passed out several times, from heat exhaustion. He said they had Zone Control and his parents had complete control over the thermostats. I could have cried over how badly he was treated as a child. We have a lot of long chats now, but I will never get over that story. My heart cried for the little boy he was and how he was tortured by staying in a room with no air conditioning and lying in sweaty sheets. I know now why he needs to keep the air conditioning so low and why he wants to be able to have control over the AC unit in our bedroom. He still has the fear of no air conditioning.