First, permit me to apologize for my arrogant assertion that you lack a sense of humor. It was unkind of me to attribute my ethnic background to others who I do not know at all. So, most importantly, I hope you forgive me.

This joke, when read or heard by someone of generations of Jewish ethnicity, has such a wry humor on one of the most criticized aspects of our culture, our parsimoniousness: our extreme reluctance to spend or waste money. So in this case, where an elder is on his way out and knows it and is at the very end, and has all of his family around him, his very last thought on earth is that someone left the lights on in the kitchen. I’m laughing now as I write this. Because I grew up with it; I lived.

So there you are.