My wife and I were going to go on vacation and our daughter was house sitting.
- She was eighteen years old and getting ready to go to college, and we thought she was old enough to take care of things for the week.
It was time to change the air filter in the furnace, and I thought it was a good time to teach her how to do it. It wouldn’t be too long before she would be out on her own, and changing an air filter was a simple chore if you knew how to do it. I took her to the basement and showed her where the air filter was supposed to go, and then had her open the chamber. You would have thought she found a dead animal inside, she was so squeamish. She told me it was dirty and she didn’t want to touch it. I rolled my eyes and told her that getting your hands dirty wasn’t a crime, nor would it kill her. She removed the air filter and with two fingers, she placed it in the trash. She didn’t mind picking up the clean air filter, but she didn’t want to put it in the furnace. She asked if she should get the vacuum cleaner and clean the insides before she replaced the air filter. I looked inside, and it wasn’t that dirty, but if she wanted to do a little extra work to the furnace, I was going to let her. By the time she was done with changing the air filter, she was excited and wanted to do more. I was wondering if I had made a mistake showing her how to change the air filter. She was now talking about giving up on college and going to HVAC school.