Lifestyle
Dad Frozen Into Recliner Still Refuses to Touch Thermostat Set at 62
FEMA says a Bangor home now meets the definition of a glacier. The father inside it has blocked a federal disaster declaration on the grounds that heat costs money.
BANGOR, ME — The Federal Emergency Management Agency said Friday it was ready to declare a Bangor home a federal disaster area after a local father was found frozen solid into his recliner, but the declaration was blocked by the father, who has not touched the thermostat since 2003 and is not starting now.
“We don’t pay to heat the outdoors,” Roger Pelletier, 61, said from inside roughly 14 inches of ice. “Put on a sweater. Put on four sweaters. Your grandfather walked to school in this.”
The thermostat, set at 62 degrees, has a strip of masking tape across it reading “DON’T. — DAD.” Family members say the tape went up after his son nudged it to 64 in 2011, an incident still known in the house as “the Event.”
FEMA regional coordinator Glen Chillingsworth said the living room now meets the agency’s definition of a glacier. “We have a moose in the kitchen that appears to be lost,” he said. “The kids are doing homework in snow pants. The dog has applied for asylum next door.”
His wife, Bev, said she has asked for heat for 22 winters. “He told me if I’m cold, I should go stand by the refrigerator, because that’s warmer than the house now,” she said. “He was right. I hate that he was right.”
Pelletier’s doctor has asked him to raise the temperature two degrees. Pelletier asked who was paying for the two degrees.
Current indications suggest the ice will hold until April, when Pelletier plans to complain about the air conditioning.
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