I received a notice from my electricity company yesterday letting me know how I compare to my neighbors in terms of amount of usage. I didn’t know this was a thing. Do oil or garbage companies do this, too? Anyway, apparently, my household uses more electricity than 99% of my neighbors. (I’m a winner!)

It seems a rather odd message to come from an electricity company. Wouldn’t they be interested in rewarding greater usage? Also, the congratulations they gave me for reducing my usage of electricity since last year just confused me even more. Do they really want me to send them less money? It seems doubtful.

So, in order to avoid confusion I propose that they craft an honest letter to their awesome customers such as myself. I have even developed a prototype that they may freely use:

Dear Mrs. Imperfect Mommy,

We at Your Electric Company would like to recognize you for your fantastic waste of precious resources contributing to our pension plans use of our service. We are pleased to have customers who are so wasteful so in need of our services. And we’d just like to say that we support you in your decision to allow your kids to sleep with their lights on in order to banish the monsters, and to use three space heaters in your already-heated home to keep warm during the New England winters. We wish more customers were just like you (not like those cheapskates down the street who actually care about their impact on the planet).

That, I would totally understand. In kind, I would respond with a gracious display of humility as follows:

Dear Electric Company,

Thank you for the recent honor you have bestowed upon me for being one of your top customers. I have worked tirelessly this year for such recognition. But I couldn’t have done it alone.

First, I would like to thank the builders of my 200 year-old home, who apparently had to frame an entire house without the use of a single straight edge or level. Without them, the doors might actually fit in the frames and I wouldn’t be able to feel the wind rustling through my hair as I sit on the couch. I also appreciate their environmentally-friendly use of horsehair as insulation (BTW, if you had asked me before I moved into this house I would have sworn that horsehair and compressed lead dust make excellent insulation. Turns out, not so much).

I’d also like to thank my three lovely children who seem to become hypnotized by the mere act of opening the refrigerator door. They can actually stand in this position for minutes at a time. It is fascinating to behold. But their efforts don’t stop there. They seem to have a factory-installed inability to ever close a door upon leaving or entering the house no matter the temperature differential on both sides of the door. Amazingly, this is paired with a similar inability to turn off a light. Or anything else. Ever. (You should see how many batteries we go through in this house).

I promise to continue diligently in my efforts to be worthy of your recognition.

Deeply In debt(ed),

Imperfect Mommy

* All right, you over-40s, who knows this reference?

P.S. While we are discussing service companies I’d like to give props to the folks from the Septic Tank cleaning service.  No matter how much shit we give them they keep coming back. You guys rock.