Vornado: Love of My Life
If you spend a lot of time at Bed, Bath, and Beyond, you have likely noticed the disturbing trend that fans are getting quieter. Maybe you think this is a good thing. Maybe you’re one of those crazy people who can fall asleep in a quiet room, or in, God forbid, a noisy one. MAYBE YOU SHOULD STOP READING THIS POST. Sorry, but this is an emotional topic for me.
I can’t fall asleep unless there is white noise, preferably the white noise from a fan. White noise machines are fine for when I am traveling, but I much prefer the real, soothing noise of a fan to the prerecorded hiss of a machine. The louder the fan, the better. I have always been in the market for loud fans, but now that I live in a small, old house with my small, loud baby, I really need a fan that can cover the sounds of my lovely little baby’s scream cries. Now, before you accuse me of being a neglectful parent, you should know that my husband and I sleep with a baby monitor in our room every night so we can monitor her noises and respond appropriately. However, my husband watches the baby on weekend mornings so I can sleep, and when she is crashing around downstairs, pulling books off of shelves and crying about getting her diaper changed, I need the fan equivalent of noise-cancelling headphones.
In 2005, I was living in a railroad-style apartment in New York City with two roommates. One of the roommates started dating a party promoter with a Cocaine habit (a real winner!), and they liked to have loud sex every morning at about 6am. (Were they waking up early to have sex before work? Nope! The roommate was unemployed, and the boyfriend didn’t have any morning parties to promote.) I made it clear to my roommate that being woken up by angry sex noises was a terrible way to start my day, and I hoped that she would reschedule the screw sessions. Instead, she went to the neighborhood hardware store to buy me a fan. She said that when she pointed to one fan and asked the store employee whether it was a good one, he gave her a meaningful look and said only: “It’s a Vornado.” This was supposed to mean something to her. She assumed he meant it was a good fan, and she bought it for me. She was wrong. It’s not a good fan. It’s the best fan.
The Vornado, which rhymes with tornado, is small and loud, a difficult combination to find. Instead of only having three levels to choose from, it has a knob like a light dimmer that allows you to choose any level of sound you want. I have moved 9 times in the past 12 years, and have brought the Vornado with me to each new home. My mom and sister, fellow light sleepers, have coveted this fan for years. It is perfect. Or, it was perfect until, horror of horrors, it developed a rattle.
For those of you heavy sleepers out there, you probably do not understand that a fan with a rattle is useless. White noise is soothing, but irregular white noise will drive you (me) insane. So, what can I do?
I’ve tried to repair it. Apparently, if you send your Vornado to the Vornado factory in Andover, Kansas with a check made out for the exact amount of the repair, which is based on the fan model, they will repair it and send it back to you. This sounds like a good plan…for someone with no one but time on their hands! I can’t tell you how far down my to do list this task is. It would require me to call the factory, find out how much the repair will cost…I don’t even want to finish typing out this list.
I’ve tried replacing it. I’ve looked at other Vornados, but they are nowhere as loud as my Vornado, and I’ve experimented with other fans. My husband and I went to a camp in Lake Arrowhead a few years ago, and there was an industrial size fan in our cabin called the Air King. I was excited, and turned it on. What I didn’t anticipate was that the heat in our cabin would go out that night, and that the Air King would blow icy air around the room with unmatched ferocity. It was one of the coldest nights of my life. It took my husband about two years to fully forgive me for that night, but once he did, he purchased me an Air King from a Palm Springs grocery store. We still use it, and while it’s great, it REALLY circulates air around the room, which is less than ideal during the winter.
I’ve tried giving the Vornado away. Last week, I started carrying it out to my husband’s car because he was going to drop some things off at the Salvation Army. But I couldn’t do it. The Vornado and I have been through so much together, and maybe, one day, I will take the time to ship it to the Vornado factory, and we can go back to the way things used to be!
Until that day, the Vornado sits in the hall closet, and I continue my hunt for the perfect fan.
Originally posted March 21, 2017 on Medium: https://medium.com/@leightondavis_20191/vornado-love-of-my-life-7442550ef53d.