Dust In The Wind

Last week at work, somebody turned on a dang big ventilation fan or somesuch. I've worked there in that particular office for over year now and I've never heard that noise before. The constant rumbling reminded me of an airport terminal.

And, as an added bonus, it was blowing dust down on me from the air vents.

Actually, I'm being pretty generous when I say that it was blowing some dust on me. It actually covered me head to toe in stinky black bits. It looked like snow in Hades.

My chair crunched over the particles on the floor when I rolled. My eyes burned. My mouse stopped working. The "water" level in my mug kept increasing, despite the fact that I wasn't putting any more water in it. My aggressive hacking "huff puff BLOOOOOWWWW" campaign was the only reason my keyboard was still working.

Two coworkers fled the scene, red-eyed and weeping.

While we tried to find out who had turned on the swirly doom-cloud machine, somebody suggested that I could try to block off the vent over my desk. I tried, but when I pushed the lever what happened was that every other blade turned in toward each other, creating a powerful funnel effect.

So, I could have debris blown gently into my eyes, or aggressively into my eyes.

The guy from the cubical closest to me showed up back at his desk with a canary and a hard-hat. The canary bleated sadly and fell over. The coworker left again.

A couple of years ago I attended a Tulsa Talons (AF2 Football) game where the cheerleaders threw heavily-branded "US Cellular" bandannas up into the crowd. I got one, and had tossed it back behind my desk. In desperation, I dug out the blue bandanna and put it across my face like a makeshift SARS mask so I could breathe.

The transformation was complete. I became "Jeff, the Code Bandit." It actually didn't help much with the breathing, but I did feel slightly more dangerous.