If it's not too nosy, can I inquire whether you have much hair on your arms? Mine are nearly hairless and fans are fine for me--but our daughters both have hairier arms (which makes them sound like apes, which they are not) and the slight movement of the hair bothers them in that same a-bug-is-on-me way. My guess is that it's a reaction that's nearly instinctive, since sometimes that feeling is caused by a little critter that can do you harm.
Some people liken that sort of reaction to the one so many have to snakes. Seeing one in the wild makes my stomach churn and what little arm hair I have stand up. Which is weird, because on a non-gut level, I'm not especially scared of snakes. But they do something to me which is entirely involuntary.
Maryn, thinking this kind of primitive reaction thing is interesting
Hmm, no I don't have much in the way of arm hair. (You can see my thumb in my avatar photo, not that you can tell much from a thumb). It's not just my arms either. Every summer my chorus sets up some big fans behind us that, due to the fact that we're on risers and the fans aren't, only hit our legs. Once I ended up standing right in front of one and it was awful (I shave my legs, so it definitely wasn't a hair issue that day). I ended up trading places with the lady next to me (she was thrilled to stand there).
The odd thing is that I didn't always hate them. From childhood into my mid-twenties, I liked them as much as anybody else. The dislike sort of snuck up on me.
I'm also not the least bit delicate. During my years as a vet tech/dog groomer, I actually had a reputation for handling fighters and biters that had been banned from other places, a task that requires a certain acceptance that you'll get banged up on a regular basis. I'm surprised more than one dog by ignoring a bleeding bite wound and calmly continuing with my task.
Lol, I just remembered a funny story (it has nothing to do with fans, but what fun would a thread be without the occasional tangent?). My wedding dress didn't have sleeves, so I made it a special point in the week leading up to my wedding to avoid getting bitten or scratched so that I wouldn't be all torn up in the wedding photos. The very last patient we saw before I left was a cat. Now this particular cat was usually sweet-tempered, but she wasn't feeling well that day, which can make anybody grumpy. I decided not to chance it and asked my coworker if he'd cover the appointment. In the perfect example of "no good deed goes unpunished," the cat chose that day to kick up a fuss and my poor coworker got scratches all over both his arms. We always joked afterward that those scratches were my coworker's wedding present to me.
