Here’s what you need:

and……………….

(Just the socks, hehe, and many of them).  Here’s what you do:

1.  Make the socks compact like a tennis ball.  You can fold them and slip the elastic part over the rest or tie longer socks into knots several times. 

2.  Turn the fan on high speed.

3.  Throw the socks into the fan.  It will catch them and “bat” them all over.  Sometimes the fan will miss the socks like a batter swinging and missing.  The trajectory of the socks is unpredictable and that’s part of the fun.  You can “pitch” one sock at a time or grab several and throw them at once.  There are no rules and therefore no umpires.

Our family has delighted in this silliness for many years.  It’s only fun with a group of people.  We grab piles of clean socks, work them into balls and start throwing.  It’s certainly a unique way to dust in those hard to reach corners. 

Our fan doesn’t have a light and we don’t have vaulted ceilings, two factors that might change the dynamics.  Please don’t ask me how this tradition got started.  It must come from having boys and loving baseball.

I have a funny picture in my mind: my husband and I bent over, infirmed, arthritic, trying to muster the strength to lob a sock high enough from our rocking chairs to hit the fan, commenting in a slow, shaky voice, “look at that one go, Gertrude!”