Dear Children: It wasn't what you think... and no, we will not pay for therapy

We have a big old ceiling fan in our bedroom... and I mean that literally. It's large and ancient.

Our bedroom was part of an addition to our house in the '70s, and for some reason, the owner decided not to add the heating and air conditioning duct work to it. This doesn't surprise me because based on a few other "shortcuts" I've found, I'm pretty sure it was the owner himself and a bunch of his friends who put the addition on the house.

Anyway, because the bedroom has no forced air, they compensated by adding an electric baseboard heater for when it's cold and a ceiling fan for when it's hot. Unfortunately, like most things that get old over time, this fan has developed a few problems of its own.

For instance, when I put it on low, it "ticks" a "tick tick tick tick" in perfect time, exactly as if I had a metronome clicking over my bed. And for a musician, that's a major problem. Imagine trying to fall asleep, but all you can hear is 20 different songs that fall into the same time as the beat your fan is tapping out. It's the exact same reason we don't have any analog clocks in our house. Do you have any idea how many songs are written to 60 bpm? I know, it's insane!

But that's not the fan's worst problem.

If you put it on high, it wobbles and swings back and forth violently and makes a horrible "thump thump thump" sound like an injured helicopter trying to take flight. It's really rather frightening. In fact, we have actual concerns that if we leave it on high, it will break itself loose from the ceiling and decapitate us in our sleep, leaving two severed heads on our pillows for our kids to find in the morning.


So the other night, right as I was drifting off to sleep, Charli decides she's too hot and can't sleep. This of course translates to, "honey... will you turn on the fan?"

Knowing full well that the low speed wasn't going to cut it, I went straight for the high setting and jumped back into bed.

[thump thump thump...]

"NO!" Charli screams at the top of her lungs. "THAT'S TOO FAST!"

[thump thump thump...]

"Shhh... quiet!" I whispered. "The kids are right outside the door in the living room."

[thump thump thump...]

"STOP IT... IT'S GOING TOO FAST! IF THAT THING HITS ME IN THE HEAD IT'S GOING TO KILL ME!"

[thump thump thump...]

"Ok ok... stop yelling! I'll turn it down."

But I'm pretty sure I was too late, because as soon as I turned the fan down I noticed that the TV volume in the other room had been turned up 10-fold, as if to hide unwanted noises coming from a certain parents' bedroom.

Of course I could have just been paranoid, but I still didn't have the guts to stick my head out the door and ask them to turn it down.