I've had the fan that currently sits in my bedroom since my freshman year of college. It's a simple black stand up-fan that I got at Wal-Mart back in (gulp) 2000. It even still has the tacky orange sticker on it for college storage. When I first purchased it, it was for the purpose of keeping me cool on those early September days and nights when the lack of air-conditioning in the dorms was all too obvious. For the past few years, I've mostly used it to create white noise at night to drown out street noise, so it's run for most nights the past 5 years.
A couple months ago, it started having trouble getting started when I first turned it on. It would wind up slowly and build up to speed. More recently, it hasn't been able to start at all - I can hear the motor whining as it tries to get the blades moving. So what was my solution to this problem? Buy a new Wal-Mart fan? Maybe a fancy one with a remote control? Nope. I took the cage off the front of the fan and started to manually spin the fan, similar to the way pilots started those old WWII planes (like in the movies) by spinning the prop. The surprising thing was it actually worked! Now most nights I have to jump-start my fan; it's really just become part of the routine.
This is indicative of a wider idiosyncrasy of mine. I think it points to one of the reasons I'm such a terribly slow and indecisive shopper, and why I like nice things. As the fan illustrates, once I get something, I tend to stick with it till it's dead. Dead as a doornail. If I'm going to get something that I'm going to have and use for a long time, I want it to meet my needs and be high quality. I don't want to be stuck with something that doesn't quite live up to what I use it for and that is poorly made because the likelihood is that it's going to be around for a long while.
I'm debating whether to get a new fan. If I placed a bet on it, I'd wait till the thing won't start regardless of how hard I yank on it.
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2 comments:
There are some terribly erotic underpinnings to this story, capped off beautifully by a multiply entendred concluding sentence. Brings to mind D.H. Lawrence's The Rocking Horse Winner.
Hahaha! What a hysterical comment. You, sir, give me far too much credit for my cleverness. This was actually just a story about a fan. At least, that's what I used to think.
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