Two weeks ago as I was hauling out a laundry basket, I accidentally hit the stand-up fan in our bedroom (you know, the white kind that oscillate). It started to wobble on it's base, and instead of putting the basket down and grabbing the fan, I tried to step on the base to steady it.
Alas, it fell. And the chintzy screen around the blades shattered. What a mess.
There was a more pressing need, however.
Kristie and I had grown used to the noise the fan generated. It was difficult sleeping without that hum.
So on our next trip to Walmart we decided to buy a replacement.
The selection was minimal, but we grabbed a $30 dollar one and tossed it in the cart.
When we got home and I started to put it together, I knew we were in trouble. For this fan didn't look like something made cheaply in China. In fact, it didn't look like it should have even been sold in Walmart, Slumberland, maybe, but no Wallie World.
It was all metal and had a rather ominous looking engine. Not to mention actual metal blades - the kind that if you turned it on and managed to stick your finger between the guard, well, you'd have a shredded finger (our old fan would just stop and click if this happened).
Then I carried it up to our bedroom and turned it on. Not only did the damn thing sound like I was in a wind tunnel but it roared like a jet.
"That has to be on high," Kristie said later when I demonstrated it.
"Nope," I said. "This is high," and cranked it up.
"Good Lord," she said grabbing the bed spread before it could sail against the fall.
We left it on low and slept like we were in an airplane hangar. I feared that the blade would come off and whirl around the room.
In the morning Kristie declared, "That fan has to go!"
So we took the small, cheap plastic fan out of Kenzie's room and used that. And it was perfect. No gale force winds and just enough buzz to get us to sleep.
The problem was Kenzie didn't have any noise in her room, so she woke up whenever KoKo opened her door or someone went to the bathroom.
This meant putting the small fan back in her room and buying another - much smaller - fan from Walmart.
Kristie grabbed a little cheap $9 fan. No assembly required. The only problem was that when I walked in and laid down, the fan began to make the most annoying high pitched sound. It was like trying to fall asleep at the dentist's office with the drill running periodically.
Shaking and pounding on the thing did no good.
Finally, we just cranked it up a notch and the whining ceased. It's loud but not nearly as loud as the jet engine fan we initially bought.
Maybe I can bring that sucker to class in the spring. It's a three-pronged plug in too, so no OSHA worries there.
I'll just have to remind students to hold their papers and tablets down when I turn it in.
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