Fan Contract

The first day of class, the teacher had us all sign a paper saying that we waived our right to complain about the fan. The contract was one page, with the terms of the agreement printed in a few brief lines at the top and more than enough lines for all of us to sign underneath. None of us knew exactly what "the fan" was, but we all signed nevertheless. We were concerned that we wouldn't be able to take the class otherwise. Once he had all of our signatures, the teacher taped this paper to the side of a portable box fan, reminding us of our agreement.

He kept the fan on his desk, facing out towards the class. He would turn it at various angles from time to time, so that at one time or another, everyone had the experience of having this fan blowing at them. Needless to say, it was irritating. It would dry out our eyes and blow dust into our faces, and it would blow our pencils and papers off our desks. Sometimes the teacher would carry the fan by the handle, and he would walk around the class with it as he gave his lecture. He would stop to make some point or another, and he would stand there with the fan propped up on the top of someone's desk, blowing directly at them, and he would look around at the class and go on talking, not acknowledging the fan at all, pretending like he didn't notice that he was holding it right in someone's face.

There were two girls who sat right in front of his desk that really got the worst of it. Nearly every class, one of them would finally break and throw her pencil down and ask, "Do you have to have that fan blowing on us all the time? Can you please just turn it off!?" And he would reply, "No, you signed the contract. Anyone else have any questions?" He always said it that way, the sentence already half crumpled up and thrown in the waste basket before immediately moving on to other things. Maybe this was supposed to be a lesson to us to be careful what we signed. Maybe he liked getting on our nerves. Maybe he just really liked his fan. He never did say.