Is it possible to aggressively flick a light switch on and off? I think I have actually discovered a new way for passive-aggressive people to let out their anger: and yes, that is to turn the light switch. On. And. Off. Very quickly, and as hard as you can.
I lived in France last semester and apparently, leaving the lights on when you leave your room there is a serious offense. I am not sure why electricity costs more abroad - since France has almost as many nuclear power plants as America - but one suspects that in their own passive-aggressive way, the French politicians (no naming names here) deny all knowledge of them and take all the electricity to use for themselves and their bourgeois dinner parties.
I discovered this "light switch aggression" after being lectured by my host mother who was bitter about my inability to keep the lights switched off when I was not in the house.
The lecture, however, was only after an aggressive door slamming on my light-filled room after I left the house for ten minutes to return a late video. (The store, of course, was closed - meaning its lights were most definitely, and actually, off. Which is new for video stores, and mostly unheard of in the United States, where along with postal services and corporations they tend to fill America and the rest of the universe with a shared glory of luminosity.) I quickly returned, fully intending to apologize for the aggressive door-slamming. Instead, I was greeted bitterly: "You left the lights on."
"Oh."
"This is not the first time. You have left the lights off many times before."
Therefore, because it is important, this is the part where I pause to stop and stare at the flickering lights on the TV, attempting to remember when, indeed, I had left the lights on. Considering that I religiously turn the lights off whenever I leave the house, I doubted seriously that I had left them on so many times but was trying hard to remember anyway. After my arrival in France where I was lectured for considerable amounts of time about the lights - she turned the lights off for me while I was still in the room - but I did not need them since apparently she thought I could read with my eyes closed
Upon reflection, I suppose I would not remember, since she found them on and turned them off for me, now didn't she? Or at least I am sure her thinking would go that way.
She considers my pause to contemplate as an affront. I guess I am just a slow thinker, (after all, I fit in the passive-aggressive category), because she carries on without waiting for a response.
"Oh yes, do not deny it, you left the lights on. Many times!"
Again, I pause to think. "Well, usually I don't. I guess I forgot. But ..."
"No, you leave them on a lot. Considering that you leave them on all the time when you are there at night, you do not need them on during the day, too!"
Rather than continuing to argue with her, I nod my head and leave the room. To calm myself down, I go into the kitchen to make myself tea. And on the way out, I flick the light switch off, as hard as I can. Just so she can hear the little click as the kitchen light is extinguished.
Elizabeth Lash is a senior majoring in International Relations.
