Yes, I run a fan all night during the cold of winter, and I'll tell you why

I was sitting in my favorite chair, solving a crossword puzzle, when Valerie walked into our living room and sized up everything I had going on.

“Do you need all this?” she asked, with that smile she gets on her face when she considers a situation over the top.

“Need all what?” I replied.

“This?” she asked, pointing to the ceiling fan spinning above her head.

“That’s just to get the air circulating in here.”

“That?” she asked, pointing to the humidifier humming in the corner.

“I like the white noise while I’m doing my crossword puzzles at night.”

“And what about the TV?” Val asked, referring to the Celtics game playing behind her and wondering how its low volume was not white noise enough.

“Ah, that’s just for background,” I said.

An hour later, I was in bed. Before I got under the sheets, though, I turned on the fan on the floor.

“We have that white-noise machine, you know,” Val told me the next morning. “I had it on when you came to bed.”

“I know,” I replied. “It’s just not loud enough. It sounds like a low motor, or something.”

Val studied me for a moment, as though she were an anthropologist who has dedicated her career to researching an unnamed species and is no closer to understanding it than she was on her first day on the job.

“What voices in your head are you trying to drown out?” she finally asked.

She kissed me goodbye and headed out the door to work before I could answer.

Hm. I’ve never really asked myself why I need that steady hum of white noise as I sleep or that background buzz while I’m reading or chipping away at a crossword puzzle. I’m not afraid of silence, or anything. As I type these words, the house is silent and likely will remain so throughout my entire work day.

Maybe the answer is simple. I find white noise soothing. I always have.

When I was a little kid, I cherished those winter nights when I was a little under the weather and needed a humidifier in my room. The soft, consistent and vaporous hiss of it lulled me to sleep. It provided a break from the routine silence in which I usually slept each night. I tried to get away with running the humidifier even after I no longer needed it.

“Shawn, you do not need that tonight!” Dad would holler up to me from the living room, as he heard me filling the small humidifier with water from the bathtub faucet.

Also as a kid, I found the whir of air conditioners soothing. We had one air conditioner in the house, and it was in Mom and Dad’s bedroom. On hot summer nights, they let me sleep in their bed, in the chilly relief of their air conditioned room, until it was time for them to call it a day. Mom or Dad would wake me up, and I’d shuffle over to my own bedroom to suffer in the heat and silence. The cool air in their bedroom was always a reprieve from the oppressive mugginess, yes, but it was the mechanical hum of the big and clunk air conditioner in their window that I missed more.

The best thing about getting older was that I could do what I want. By the time I was a teenager, my parents had given up the argument over whether I needed a humidifier or, more likely, a fan running in my bedroom as I slept all night. I’ve had a fan on as I’ve slept ever since.

A quick look online shows white noise is quite popular, largely because of the calming effect it has. Fair enough, but I do not believe that’s why I need it. Come the end of the day, I am at my most relaxed. The responsibilities of my waking hours are largely done by the early evening, and I am able to wind down on my terms. For me, that usually means watching a movie or doing one of the crossword puzzles. It does not take long for me to leave this world for Dream Land once my head hits the pillow and I’ve listed those five things about the day that I’m most grateful for.

I think it’s simple, really. No analysis needed. White noise is soothing and it shrinks down your world for a good night’s rest. Without white noise, you’re subject to every bump in the night – the police cruiser or fire engine screaming down Main Street, the cats batting an elastic around the tiled floor, things like that. Perhaps I’m a light sleeper, easily awakened, and the white noise keeps disruptive sounds at bay. For the record, though, I have always heard the noises I have needed to hear – my newborn daughter’s cries when she needed to be feed during the wee hours, that rare phone call at an ungodly hour, the high-pitched beeps of the carbon monoxide detector.

All I know is I’m not alone. There’d be no white noise machines if I were. You would not see those memes on social media, asking you if you sleep with the fan on even in the dead of winter, if I were.

Valerie and I called the fire department when the CO detector beeped at three in the morning, by the way. She and Maddie and I leashed the dog and crated the cats and went outdoors to greet the firefighters as they arrived in their engine, red lights flashing. They went through our home, including the basement, and reported that we did not have a problem with carbon monoxide. They checked the battery in our detector. It was fine. We thanked them, and they left.

Shortly after going back to bed, I heard the beeps again. I got up to investigate. Turned out the noise I had heard – the one that prompted a call to the fire department and the evacuation of my home – was a weather alert on my computer, letting us know a thunderstorm was coming.

Ah, I thought, nodding at the revelation. I went back to bed, hoping the white noise would drown out any other sounds that could cause me to make a fool of myself.

Shawn P. Sullivan is an award-winning columnist and a reporter for the York County Coast Star. He can be reached at ssullivan@seacoastonline.com.

This article originally appeared on Portsmouth Herald: Shawn Sullivan: Yes, I run a fan all night during the cold of winter