The Ceiling Fan

Six and a half years we’ve been living in this house. Not a large amount of time by any stretch, but surely a long enough period during which one would figure out how all of the lights about the house work. Not so! My four and a half year old discovered just this morning that the main fan light in our master bedroom operates on a dimmer. My wife and I were dumbfounded.

All this time I’d thought something was defective about the remote: turning the light on or off required several clicks to obtain a response. It turns out that this is actually some sort of toggling function. If you continue to hold down the button, the light alternates between increasing or decreasing brightness. Wonderful! My daughter, having no preconceptions of the thing, figured this out rather quickly. Me, with my years of so-called “experience” with it, did not. I guess that goes to show that sometimes all it takes is a fresh perspective to help you grok things. There’s learning to be had in the most unlikely places, and even after long periods of time…like six and a half years.