Full Blast~

When I taught in Iowa there were days when you peeled your shirt away from your skin mid-morning due to the humidity and lack of air conditioning in the school house. It was unpleasant to say the least. A curtain of perspiration was common-place on the forehead of all staff members and students.  You just got used to it, though you never stopped complaining about it.

I remember a spunky blonde headed youngster assigned to my tutelage one year.  He just couldn’t resist putting his face in the box fans that were strategically placed around the room. I pointed them in a circle to help create a vortex.  This vortex was really more like a loud whooshing sound that drowned out the instruction. The kids seemed to like that part.

There were times this boy would shove a pencil through the fan grill just to see what would happen.  He, along with anyone else who saw him would shudder when the pencil was slammed up against the whirling blades ripping the pencil to shreds.  Still, it was great fun to be five and challenge machinery that could remove a finger in one fell swoop. This trick was repeated at least a dozen times that year.  Most kids who bore witness to the destruction the first time were cured of any further desire to shove things into the whirling machine. Though there was always someone willing to temp fate and shove a pencil or any other small items at arms length in to the whirling wonder machine when I wasn’t looking.

I had given countless “speeches” in my best teacher voice trying to drive home the importance of safety with electric fans to no avail.

Perhaps the most entertaining sport with the whirling fans for five year olds was to talk into the fan as it was on high speed.  It puts off an echo that makes your voice sound amazingly humorous.  If you haven’t tried it, do it today!   It wasn’t uncommon to hear two or three girls with their faces plastered to the grill singing a song and having it echo back into the room sounding much better than it ever would if they sang on their own without any electric appliance providing support.

So, the fall marched on and the hot days stayed steady.  The pencil shoving boy would bounce in from recess a dripping mop and start clapping and chanting, “FULL BLAST!  FULL BLAST!  FULL BLAST!  FULL BLAST!”  The claps were in sync with the chanting.  He would dance around one of the fans while chanting. (You must be thinking I have no classroom management as you read this.)  He would always reach for the knob and crank the fan up to high speed and then promptly plop himself on the floor in front of it and howl into the fan creating an uninvited concert for his classmates, who of course found this to be wildly funny.  I, of course, did not.

I learned a trick that year.  One HOT afternoon I managed to pry the selector knob off with a pair of pliers.  Viola!  My dancing, singling, sweating five year olds could no longer hold the class captive with their singing or pencil shredding.

Pliers: they aren’t just for changing the channel on your old analog Television set that the knobs fell off of.  (Familiar to any of you?)