Our biggest fan

One of my earliest memories is of me curled up under a blanket immediately in front of a gigantic metal fan. I actually remember doing this a lot. Part of the reason I could never sleep on a bed was because my body needed to b close to a fan for full resting action. This, mind you, was independent of the weather. Our hearty metal allies were originally recruited against the fierce Texas summers, but I slept right next to one even on cold nights, sometimes with several blankets to make up for the fact that all of my body heat was being sucked away. Crazy? Yes. Very.
We also used them to make wind tunnels by clothspinning blankets together. These things could take up a entire room and stayed up as long as we could convince Mom to let us have them.
Sometime someone discovered (and I think it was me) that if you attached a balloon to your favorite action figure, fired up the fan and tipped it vertical, lo and behold, the ting would hover! On medium you could usually fit a good four or five of these balloon warriors and they'd bounce around congenially, but when you shifted it to high, they'd start thrashing about wildly until only the victor remained. Marvels of engineering, those fans.