Righty Tighty My Ass!

Today, I helped Laurie set up an oscillating fan in her classroom.
As is my custom, I assumed that I could assemble it without the manual.

As a result of my inflated sense of mechanical aptitude, I spent about 15 minutes of my life accomplishing something that a dexterous chimp could have accomplished in half the time.

My stumbling block was the circular plastic nob that screws in to connect the rotating blade to the base, which contains the motor which, in turn, rotates the aforementioned blade.

This two-inch piece of plastic shattered my faith in one of the bedrock certainties that has framed my worldview.

Throughout the vicissitudes of cruel fate, despite life's ups and downs, I always took comfort in the notion that you could always depend on this time-honored expression: "Righty tighty, lefty loosie".

Not if you're putting together a fan, my dear naive readers.

Because the blade rotates clockwise, the screw has to flout conventional wisdom and damn humanity to a lifetime of existential trepidation.

...Or maybe I'm reading too much into this.