A Dumb “Blind” Moment…

Assalamu alaikum, I’m not sure how to explain what a “dumb blind moment” is, it’s kinda hard to define, but I had one yesterday. Let me explain… I had turned on the air conditioner yesterday, and wanted to check to see if the vents in the computer room were completely open. Because my computer tends to generate a lot of heat, that room tends to be the hottest room in the house, so I wanted to make sure that the vents were open, because it was still hot in there, and the ceiling fan in there was just blowing the cool air somewhere else than on me. In older houses, the air vents are located on the floor, however, it seems that in newer houses, the vents are now on the ceiling, and my understanding, though I’m not sure if this is true, is that putting the vents on the ceiling is “safer” than having them on the floor.

So anyway, I was hunting for the vent, I climbed up on my futon, I think Chloe thought I was nuts because she was standing there sniffing my feet as I was standing up there, trying to get my balance. So I’m feeling around for the vent, seeing if I can touch the ceiling, realizing that the ceiling is higher than I thought it was. And also realizing that adjacent to the air-conditioning vent is the ceiling fan which is much lower than the air-conditioning vent / ceiling. And I discover this how?

By feeling around, er, no, waving my hand around and accidentally getting a good whack on the hand by the fastly-whirring blades of the ceiling fan. Ouch…! I then realize after looking at my somewhat scraped finger, that I really could have hurt myself! I had sudden visions of my finger being cut off by the ceiling fan blade, if I’d not moved my hand away as fast as I did and had let the blades whack my hand a few more times. And when it hit my hand it made this really loud fast “whack whack whack” sound! So for a split second, I had this startled “wow that coulda been bad” feeling, and I thought to myself, “How Stupid! I really coulda hurt myself” As I’m rubbing my finger and checking to make sure there’s no blood or broken bones (yeah, it hit my hand that hard as the fan was on high).

I then climbed down off the futon, turned off the ceiling fan, ran and grabbed my cane, because I figured, well, if there was anything else up there that could whack my hand off, better my cane than my hand! Because, well, I can replace a cane. I can’t order a new hand from the latest MaxiAids catalog.

So here I am, waving my cane around, Chloe still is confused, wondering what I’m doing! I still can’t touch the ceiling, and eventually give up, thinking that as I can feel plenty of cool air coming out of the vent, that the vent must be open and in any case, I’ll ask my husband to look once he gets home. Which probably should have been the first course of action. And there you have it a “dumb blind moment”.