5/30 column: Fan Night!

There is a war waging at my house. It’s the fan war.

My husband cannot sleep without the constant air stream — and incessant buzz — of a fan blowing in his face.
Me? Not so much. In fact, I loathe it.

We’ve been married for 11 years, so you’d think we could’ve come to a compromise on this issue. But no. The fan has been our great divider since Day 1.

A tall, black oscillating fan on a singular leg was one of the only luxury items we bought for our first apartment in the Twin Cities — during the potato-and-rice years. Too broke to run the air conditioner that came standard in our living room window, we ran the fan to extinguish the heat from our third-floor apartment.

Come bedtime, we had a deal. He’d get one night with the fan. I’d get the next night without it. Sounds reasonable, right?
But before long — under the pretext of the summer’s sweltering heat wave — the fan was running every night.
It was, I was sure, a metaphor for our new marriage.

“Do you not love me?” I’d holler into the gust, spitting renegade strands of windblown hair from my mouth. “Do you not care that I hate this? Do I mean so little to you?”

After a brief truce, the fan snuck its way back into our bedroom — this time in the form of a personal fan clamped to Jay’s nightstand.

But even this compromise was not good enough for me. To this day, it sparks conversations that leave me feeling like a crazed, albeit validated, whiner.

Me: “How can you sleep with that constant whirring in your ear?”

Him: “I like the background noise.”

Me: “It’ll keep the kids awake.”

Him: “They’ve been sleeping for hours.”

Me: “It blows my in my face all night.”

Him: “Turn the other way.”

Me: “You don’t love me.”

If I have to be honest, I’ll admit to you — but never, ever to my husband — that I’m getting used to the fan. I don’t even notice it every night anymore. I don’t fall asleep silently cursing the man sleeping next to me, certain our relationship is doomed — wondering how I could possibly have married someone so wrong for me. So totally incompatible.

It’s really become a matter of pride now. A matter of standing up for what I believe in. For, I’ll admit it, getting my own way. At our rustic, air conditioning-less cabin — where the box fans left by the previous owners have holes in the framework large enough to stick a fist in — Jay pulls out the mother of all defenses. “Keeps the mosquitoes away,” he says, nodding with authority.

And while I have more leverage with these fans (they’re the kind you warn your kids about — telling them that if they come within four feet, they’ll spend the rest of their childhoods putting Legos together with their toes), I have to admit he’s got a point.

And so, at the cabin, we have found some middle ground. On “fan night,” Jay sleeps on the couch with the gusting air stream pointed directly at his face — waking blissfully in the morning with a Don King ‘do. I sleep in the bed with all the stagnant air I want.

Happy as can be.