When you were growing up, did your parents holler through the house, “Cut the light off!” Mine sure did, especially at bedtime.

Mamaw was the queen of the phrase. She didn’t want to pay to light a room that no one was sitting in. I remember her going from room to room, cutting lights off as she went, mumbling about the light bill.

Brandon gets that way too. I can always tell when he’s worried about money because that’s when he starts fretting over the lights and how long our showers are. Just last week, I heard him fuss at the girls to cut the lights off a couple of hundred times.

It made me wonder where the phrasing comes from. It turns out the phrase goes back to the era of knife switches. The blade cut into the saddle, which turned the light on/off.

I haven’t ever noticed Brandon say, “Cut the lights on.” But I say it all the time. I grew up hearing it.

How about you? Do you turn the lights on and off? Or do you cut them?