Broken blades

One of our night routines since we moved the kids to their own bedroom is to do a last check on them before tucking ourselves in bed to retire for the night. It usually consist of us checking that they are still breathing, having the air-conditioner turned-off, checking that the fan works well and is pointing to the right direction as well as making sure that their night-light remain on. It has become a habit and I don’t think we even think about it.

One evening however, just as we were checking up on Squirt, I thought the fan sounded a little off. By “off”, I meant it sounded like it was squeaking away with a freaky-sounding rattle – a sound I haven’t heard before. I tried to move the fan around in the dark (sometimes, that is all it takes, and I didn’t want to wake Squirt up), but nothing helped. Silver Bullet chimed and thought that it was probably nothing.  He was more worried that I’d wake Squirt up if I turn on the lights.

Mother’s instinct prevailed and I turned on the side lamp just to convince myself that it was actually nothing. I then turned off the fan as it began to sound way, way off. As soon as I did that, Silver Bullet noticed that the blade had actually cracked!

I did not like what I saw. Had the blade continue to rotate in in the way a fan was supposed to, the cracked blade would have shattered into several pieces. The fan was placed quite close to Squirt’s cot -  I shudder at the thought of us what might had happened had we not gone to the room in time.

It was a scary thought.

Considering that the fan was barely 6 months old, I wonder if it was already defective when we bought it given that it was on sale. I wish I knew what caused it. One of the blades broke off completely a few days later.

And just like that, I can feel my paranoia on fans and blades surfacing. Arrrggghhhhhhhh!!