The Flying Trousers of Doom

The other morning Sally woke up a little cranky. Around 5am the dogs detected some wild creature somewhere between the backyard and the next county and went off barking. That's never a good way to wake up. On top of that she'd somehow managed to turn the dryer knob counterclockwise and the dryer wouldn't turn on. She'd washed her work clothes the night before and her pants were nowhere near dry. It was chilly that morning and she was picturing going to work in wet pants. She was getting less happy by the minute. What I said next only made it worse.
 I told her I'd hook her pants up to the ceiling fan and send them for a spin and they'd be dry in no time. She thought I was messing with her and she looked like she was about to cry, but I quickly reassured her I was serious. "Really?" she said. 'Yep." She went on to say that maybe I was a bit useful after all, because she didn't think she'd have ever thought about doing laundry that way. I told her that it was exactly the same as hanging them in front of a fan, only different.
 I left the pants on the hanger and made a loop of duct tape and hung it around one of the blades and through the hanger. It had to spin between the fan blades and the tops of the lights without hitting anything. The clearance, Clarence, was only an inch between the hanger and the lights on the fan, and I had to pick it up and sling it over the lights and sort of give it a spin like an antique prop plane, but after it got going it was smooth as silk, as you can see in the photo. It made a nice cool breeze and it was somehow relaxing to watch. I was pleased.
 Sally was too. She commented that it reminded her of something out of Indiana Jones, and I told her it was Indiana Jones and the Trousers of Doom. She made her usual chuckle at the cheeseball joke but she's used to them by now to say the least. Cheeseball jokes are okay once in a while, and they make the good jokes seem better. The main thing she was concerned with is that my crazy contraption was going to work. I reminded her that it was multitasking with air, and also green, since we weren't burning any juice running the dryer. I finally managed to put a smile on her face. Well, maybe it was the coffee, but either way she turned that frown upside-down and I was glad.
 A few minutes later we realized that "Trousers of Doom" wasn't all that far off-base. The first couple of times we tried to make it across the room we were slapped rudely by a pair of wet, spinning trousers. The fan blades would lurch to a halt and moan and groan, and we'd have to pick up the pants and sling them over the lights and try to get them spinning again and not have our fingers mangled by the fan blades, so there really was an element of danger, and to me that made it more fun. To Sally it was an annoyance, but it wasn't too bad since the pants were starting to get dry. Once we got the hang of it though, and we got the timing down, we could walk perfectly in between revolutions. It was like a ballet routine. Maybe it wasn't as deadly as what Indy had to face, with all the bottomless pits and revolving knives and swinging blades and big-ass boulders and whatnot, but we had to stand back and survey the situation and figure out the timing and do a trial run in our heads first, just like Indy, so in that respect it was exactly the same as the movie. You could almost smell the popcorn.
 Not every woman necessarily wants a mega-jock, but it's good if you can do a few things. Like most girls I think maybe Sally gets a little kick out of it when I rig up a spur-of-the-moment deal, especially since more often than not they actually work. I reminded her that duct tape is the Universal Stickum, and that miracles can be worked with a roll of it. I also told her that necessities, along with Frank Zappa, are the Mothers of Invention. More cheese, but with an upgrade. The moral of the story is that she went to work with dry pants.