The Fantastic Fan

A few years ago my husband was working a different shift and his two days off were during the week. We hated not having the weekends off together but on the plus side, he managed to get more stuff done around the house with the kids in school and me working.

One day I came home from work and found the house empty, which was unusual so I headed down the hall looking for everyone. When I reached my bedroom I found my husband, son and youngest daughter all lying in our bed with these strange smiles on their faces. It was obvious they were up to something so I stood there at the foot of the bed just staring at all three of them with their silly grins and asked what was going on. We went back and forth several times with me asking them what they were up to and them denying that there was anything out of the ordinary going on. Finally, my husband asked if I noticed anything different in our room so I looked around but saw nothing unusual. It still looked like the same messy bedroom as it did when I’d left that morning. The suspense was now killing me. When I just couldn't spot anything different he finally told me to look up. I did and a brand new shiny ceiling fan was hanging above our bed. Ours had been on its last leg, rattling and shaking for a while so I was extremely pleased that he’d finally installed a new one.

As they all three continued to lie there watching me with those silly grins my husband then told me that the fan did something really cool but that he couldn’t say it out loud but that he would spell it. I looked at him like he was crazy and he spelled “S A Y -L I G H T -O F F”. I thought he was losing it so I just stood there so he spelled it out again. I hesitated but finally said, “light off”, and the light actually turned off. Next he spelled out “S A Y- L I G H T - O N”. I did and lo and behold the light turned on. I was stunned and just stood there processing this and then said “No way!” He continued giving me more commands such as “fan off”, "fan on" and this master of all fans was following my every command. I couldn’t believe that I could actually verbally command my new ceiling fan to turn on and off like that. This was better than The Clapper! (Not that I had a clapper but the idea was always intriguing!) All I could think about was no more getting out of bed on cold mornings to turn the fan off or stumbling around in the dark to feel for the light switch. This was awesome! I was so impressed and amazed with the technology of this new magical fan. Well, that was until the last two “test” commands didn’t work quite as smoothly as the first few. The timing was off by a few seconds after I verbalized a command and it was at that point my husband and kids could no longer contain their laughter and I then knew I’d just fallen for the “voice controlled fan trick” hook, line and sinker. (And no, I’m not a blonde in case you were wondering)

My husband had been hiding the remote control to the fan under the comforter the entire time. I wanted to kill him but I was laughing too hard at the time, as were all three of them. As disappointed as I was that I didn't actually have a new magical voice controlled fan, the Mother of All Fans, I was still stoked that it at least came with a remote control. It took a while for us to train ourselves not to pull the strings on the fan or to flip the light switch and to stop losing the remote somewhere in the bed, but it was pretty cool and we became spoiled by the convenience factor in no time.

About a year ago the remote stopped working and we’d really gotten dependent on it so my husband made several attempts to fix it with no luck. The fan worked just fine in the caveman mode, but not with the remote. Unfortunately, we were forced to return to life as we'd once known it, pulling strings and flipping switches. It was tough, some mornings were colder than others, but somehow we managed to survive!

Well, guess what? The prankster husband of mine came home from Wal-Mart yesterday with the part he’s needed for over a year to fix the remote and he got it working again so we’re once again living life in luxury! Now if I could just find a remote control with a mute button for my husband’s mouth, I’d be good to go!