Is it wrong to love a heater?

As John Arbuckle pondered this question last Sunday with Garfield, I was drawn back to memories of cold winter days on Bison Court. Our family room furniture was arranged such that when you walked into the room from the eat-in kitchen you could see the T.V. in the righthand corner of the wall, next to the wood-burning fireplace. Along the left hand wall perpendicular to the fireplace were two swivel rocking chairs and directly across from the swivel rockers, on the right-hand wall perpendicular to the fireplace and T.V. was the 1970's dark-gold and burnt umber couch. Next to the couch, nearest the eat-in kitchen was the grand-daddy of Laz-E-Boy rockers where my dad used to plant his rear and watch, well, anything that was on T.V. but preferably baseball. If that gives you a bit of a mental picture, I am going to ask you to imagine the end of the couch, closest to the T.V. There was about four feet of space between the edge of the couch and the T.V. where I used to curl up with our jumbo-sized 3x3 fringed floor pillow. Almost as if it had been purposely placed, a HVAC register was located right at the place I would sit, underneath the window on that wall. I enjoyed almost nothing more than sitting next to the register with my nightgown ballooning out to capture the freshly generated heat while I roasted like a Thanksgiving Turkey. Even though that memory is about 20 years old, I still love to sit near a register on a cold day. It may even be said that just last week I turned the thermostat up just to trigger the furnace. I have to admit that I am passing down this John Arbuckle quirkiness since Madeline now fights me for the vent. Maybe, just maybe, 20 years from now Madeline will remember sitting on the vent at Betsy Avenue, while her hot-air nightgown balloons around her.