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Ever since I began working for
that Florida vacation rentals website, I have been plagued
by recurring nightmares. I am haunted at night by the
spirits of hotel rooms past.
There was a time when I
traveled quite a bit on business. Thankfully, I don't
hotels hop any more. But at night I float off to a hotel
room far away in time...
The day's work done, I
phoned home to check up on the kids. It seems there was a
shouting match going on in my absence. It sounded like
Pandemonium was winning, but Total Bedlam was making some
noise, too.
"Can you just quiet
down a bit," I said into the phone.
"YOU shut up," I
heard the man in the next room growl.
I chose to ignore him.
"Come on guys. Can't you just stop fighting for a
minute?"
"I'll show you what
fighting means" I heard through the wall.
"Geeze. I can't even
here myself think," I complained into the phone.
"Hey! I've had just
about enough of you," the guy on the other side of
the wall screamed.
Suddenly I got very scared.
I pictured a burly, six-foot-two weightlifter smashing his
fist through the wall. I hung up the phone, wondering how
thin the walls were.
Nothing happened. No fist.
No smashed wall. No burly, six-foot-two weightlifter.
I decided to go downstairs
for a stress-relief stroll. As I was closing my door, the
man from the next room emerged.
Fortunately, he was no
weightlifter.
I was about to ask him why
he had shouted at me through the wall while I was trying
to discipline my kids, when he called to me, "Hey
you. I was on the phone with my wife. Why did you have to
heckle me?"
All of a sudden, I knew how
thin the walls were.
In fact, I discovered that
hotel walls come in two thicknesses:
If you're lucky, you get
"Turn down the volume on your TV!" walls. If you
are less fortunate, you get "Turn down the brightness
on your TV!" walls.
Fortunately, hotel rooms
are immaculately clean. It's true. The sign says so. Just
as long as you don't look under the mattress to find a
1976 copy of Businessweek Magazine and theatre tickets to
a 1982 showing of The Music Man.
I don't know why hotels
pretend to be so spotless. All that junk under the bed
could be used as a marketing tool. "Stay at the
Hilltop Hilton and join in our
under-mattress-scavenger-hunt."
If the hotels don't catch
on, sooner or later the motels will. They can turn
anything into a sales pitch. Like, for example,
"Color TV" (Ooooooohh.). And "Outdoor
Pool" (I think the "outdoor" feature is a
nice added touch, don't you?) And how about "Free
Parking" (which is really a way of saying, "You
don't have to park your car in your room.").
What worries me most about
hotels is what they keep in the drawers. Did you ever
notice there is always a bible in the drawer? Why?
When you buy a car, there
is no bible in the glove compartment, although the road is
where you need prayers the most.
When you dig for the prize
at the bottom of the Cracker Jack box, it's never a bible.
Even in hospitals, where a
prayer might be all you have left, there is no bible in
the drawer.
Only in hotels and on death
row do bibles come as standard equipment.
And why just the Bible? I
have had plenty of spare time to search for Torahs and
Korans in hotel rooms, and I have never found any. Do Jews
and Muslims not stay in hotels? What do they know that I
don't?
Fortunately, I don't have
to stay in hotels anymore. I don't have to endure
shadow-puppet shows from the guy on the other side of the
wall. I don't have to keep from reading over his shoulder.
I don't have worry about what he ate for dinner.
And I don't have to listen
to his snoring. I can enjoy my own nightmares in peace.
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