randnix.com

SO, I don’t know what I did… I was trying to put on my comfortable, lightweight, extremely breathable footwear which are very sandal - like, but which I will not call sandals for fear of sounding a little lite in the — y’know what?   nevermind –  when something slipped and I hit the cord of the fan (which was on) in the bedroom, causing it to shift slightly right (my right, your left) and clockwise (for you, counter) and before I could really even register that this had happened, the thing (as in the fan, not the cord) starts sputtering like a . . . I don’t know – it was like the sound you’d hear if you were to take something pretty inflexible and shove it into the path of something rotating really really fast, but not really moving in any direction – so every rotation caused it to hit whatever you had shoved into it over and over, really really fast-like. It was that kind of sound.

The next thing I know, I’m reaching for the fan to figure out what’s causing it to make this sound, because I don’t see anything poking into the front of it, but I can hear this sound and it’s a pretty distinct sound, y’know, but then I stop for just a millisecond to confirm in my head that I’m not hearing something that SOUNDS like an object of some type shoved in the way of turning fan arms, but what is REALLY intense sparks of high voltage electricity spitting out from something I’m about to touch, and I do a quick visual, y’know, just to confirm that I don’t see anything that might be spitting out electricity (or anything else for that matter) and that’s when it happened: from out of nowhere, the fan attacked me; in fact, as if anticipating my worst fear… it started spitting at me.

My first thought was that the fan had come apart and all the little things flying toward me were fan casing shrapnel chunk pieces or something, which, I’ve watched enough tv to know, is usually quickly followed by the razor sharp spinning blades themselves. My second thought was that if that were about to happen, having more room between me and the source of these vicious flying death fan razors would be a lot better than if I were to continue my “approach vector”, so I backed off. But it was too late — the stuff started pelting my face.  Instantly I reached up to protect my face from the flying fan shrapnel and, at the exact same moment, jerked my head down to keep as much of my face as possible out of the fans line of fire (no, I haven’t actually had Navy SEAL training, but you’ll never convince the fan that I haven’t), and then I’m noticing that the blast radius created from the flying death fan shrapnel is actually quite wide for a little room fan (even if it is labeled “Turbo”) and in fact, I’m basically in the middle of a whirlwind of spinning flying fan shrapnel, but it doesn’t hurt! It’s like the fan sucks so bad that it’s missing with every shot, I think. Only then I realize it’s not missing – I’m just not FEELING anything.

Whatever ammunition that fan had been stocking up on, there was plenty of it and it was being flung fiercely in my direction. I knew this because I could see two on the bottom of my t-shirt and a cluster of 4 locking onto my right knee, so, right then, I instinctively moved into action with a quick pivot off my left foot (your right) in an attempt to spin out of the blast zone and I think the fan must’ve assumed this was me preparing to cobra-strike it with a can of soon to be opened whoop ass that I must’ve reached over and snagged from the nightstand in mid spin because at that exact moment, the noise just stopped. The blasts of fan death funk slowed almost to what I was pretty sure would be a complete stop, but, remembering how quickly the fan had launched its attack in the first place, I considered it completely unpredictable and, therefore, had no intentions of taking any chances.   Continue my spin back around, I’m nearly out of what was a freakin’ fan forced DMZ in my own freakin’ bedroom and that’s when I saw it.  

Tracing a vicious arc through the exact spot my head had been just .003 seconds ago, I saw one last huge blast of death fan funk. If it had been the 4^th of July, this shot would’ve been the finale.  In a last ditch effort to take my head off, the fan mustered everything it had and let loose with the mother of all fan shrapnel death funk razor floating volleys straight at my head – only, as I mentioned, my head wasn’t there anymore. The fan had not calculated on my cat-like reflexes and years of quiet fan combat training all leading up to this day, so it missed the mark. But it was close. So close that as my head snapped around to finish off my body’s pivot — the only thing that had saved me from taking this direct blast, I found myself at eye level, close up, and travelling at almost the exact speed as The Last Blast and that’s when I realized, cuz by that time, it had switched to slow motion and with me and The Final Projectile moving at an identical trajectory in the same direction, it was almost like we’re both standing still in terms of my being able to analyze the flying death funky fan bullet shrapnel thingy and I did said analysis from this enhanced visual perspective at that time and suddenly everything started to make much more sense as I realized the composition of the death fan’s arsenal.

It was dust. Good old-fashioned, grade-A, 100% pure American made dust.  And had there been more of it, that little fan may have gained the upper hand just from smothering me alone, but my preemptory, and timely, swipe at the cord inadvertently caused its premature attack.   I’ve always had more than my fair share of luck; this was no exception.

Of course, I don’t intend to tell the other resident of this room the same story, cuz she’d freak.   To think she’s been sleeping in the same room with that death crazed turbo air mover, mainly for the sake of white noise, and all the while it’s been planning its ultimate conquest — that would freak her right out.  Instead, when she gets home, undoubtedly she’ll see some trace of the carnage in the bedroom because, well, that’s pretty much what she does is find stuff I haven’t cleaned up all that good, and when she does see this, she’ll say, "hey, what happened in the bedroom?"  

At which point, I’ve already got it figured out, I’ll reply casually, but oh so coyly, "Oh, yeah — must’ve left something behind when I was cleaning up the fan… y’know — figured it was about time.   Just doing my part…." and as I say it, I’ll slowly fix my steely gaze directly in the face of that death fan knowing it’s only a matter of time before it gathers its forces for a second attack and knowing that on that day, as on this one, I’ll be there and I’ll be ready.