Be Careful What You Ask For (Even More Hotel Blues)

As this past New Year’s holiday approached I was feeling a bit adventurous, so I made a last minute decision to celebrate the holiday in South Florida with a good friend and her son. The idea was for me to book a hotel room in Miami, near my friend’s residence, and the three of us would drive to Ft. Lauderdale, where, we heard, the city puts on an excellent family-friendly New Year’s Eve celebration. Such was the plan.

Right from the get-go things started to go amuck. Rooms in the Miami area were pretty much booked up for that weekend, and the prices of the few available ones were so jacked up I would’ve had to sell my left kidney in order to afford one. So I ended up reserving a room for Saturday through Sunday night (New Year’s Eve) in Deerfield Beach, a three hour drive from my home, about an hour from my friend’s residence, and less than 30 minutes from Ft. Lauderdale, not a bad setup and at a very reasonable price, but sometimes you do get what you pay for.

I left Orlando later than I’d planned and by the time I arrived at Deerfield Beach the sun was low in the sky and shadows were long. As I pulled into the parking lot of the hotel I came upon a swarm of young ladies, a swim team from a prestigious university, unloading their vans and heading into the hotel.

Entering the hotel lobby was like stepping into the middle of a convention for caffeine addicted women with severe A.D.H.D. The place was wall to wall hyper, chatty, young ladies!

Now, in my younger days I would have taken advantage of this opportunity to “scope” out the women, looking for chances to flirt, make points, and maybe get a few phone numbers. But, since my shoes were older than those girls I just silently stood there, a lone island of testosterone in a sea of estrogen, wondering if any of them had a single mother.

I wormed my way to the check-in counter just as the swim coach finish checking the team in and assigning rooms. I quietly whispered to the clerk, “Please don’t tell me my room is near theirs.” She let out a sadistic laughed that made me wonder if she had a propensity for cruelty and planned on satisfying it at my expense. But alas, she acquiesced and I let out a sigh of relief when I stepped off the elevator and realized my room wasn’t even on the same floor as those hyped up, excitably loud, giggly, college coeds.

After settling in, and freshening up a bit, I realized I’d forgotten to pack my toothbrush, tooth paste, and dental floss. Now, I’m not fanatical when it comes to good oral hygiene, but I really don’t want my toothbrush to literally become just that, a tooth brush. So, as I left the hotel to go meet my friend and her family for dinner, I paused at the front desk and asked the clerk if the hotel had any dental supplies for absentminded patrons who forgot to pack theirs. They didn’t have any on hand, but if they did the toothbrush alone would’ve cost $2.00! I’d stop at a store after dinner and take care of the problem then.

The dollar store was closing when I speedily walked through the door. I quickly found and purchased the things I needed and left as hastily as I entered.

Let me tell you some things about dollar dental floss. There’s a reason it’s only a dollar—urinals cakes in public restrooms probably taste better, and the floss itself is not very strong . . . it tends to break . . . between your teeth . . . and gets stuck there. Mine broke between two lower left molars. I tried to floss out the floss only to have that also tear apart between my molars. The tiny gap between those two teeth was now completely packed with torn floss.

Panic set in. What if I couldn’t get this stuff out? Should I leave it there, hoping it will rot and fall out on its own or would that cause an infection or some other severe gum problem? If it was going to take the skill and know-how of a dentist to free my teeth of the floss, could I find one who would be willing to see me on a holiday weekend, and if so, how much would that cost me?

As it turned out, I needn’t have worried. An hour later, along with a few prayers, cut gums, and a sink splattered with blood-filled saliva, I some how (I’m still unsure exactly how) maneuvered the floss out from between the two molars, left the bathroom, sat down in the recliner by my bed, and gave a heavy sigh of relief. It was time for bed.

Sunday morning came and I rolled out of bed and headed to the bathroom for a shower, where I became aware of a couple of other facts. First, there was no mini shampoo bottle in the bathroom. I hadn’t brought shampoo from home because every hotel I’ve ever stayed in supplied those little bottles of it as a courtesy.

The second fact I became aware of was that, as a shampoo, Ivory Soap sucks. It might be great hand soap, but for washing your hair it leaves a lot to be desired. Let’s just say a handful of lard would’ve been just as effective for a shampoo substitute.

After showering, I dried off, dried my hair, and got dressed, sort of. You see, as I was getting dressed I realized I’d left more than a tooth brush, tooth paste, and floss at home. I also forgot my socks. I was beginning to wonder why the heck I even bothered to pack!

So, after getting dressed, I slipped my bare feet into my shoes and once again sheepishly approached the desk clerk and probed her for information. “Where I can buy cheap socks in this town?”

“There’s a 99 cent store a couple of miles east, down on A1A [a coastal highway].” Hopefully dollar socks would work out better for me than did the dollar floss. NOT!

I found the store. It was somewhat in disarray but there truly wasn’t a product in there over 99 cents. My eyes glazed over, my mind went numb, and the memory of the flossing fiasco of the previous night quickly faded into oblivion as I feverishly took in all the items that I could purchase so cheaply.

But, I restrained myself and began searching only for shampoo and socks. I found the shampoo without much difficulty, and to my surprise, I found not just a pair of ankle socks but a whole bag of them, originally 8 in all—it appeared as though someone had torn open the bag and stolen at least one pair, but I could live with that. Hey, the bag of socks was 99 cents. One pair for that price would’ve been a steal. To get more than one pair for that was nothing short of a modern day miracle.

There was one thing that puzzled me though. There was nothing on the package to indicate if the socks were men’s or women’s. According to the bag the socks were size 9 to 11 (ever wonder how one sock can fit three different sizes of feet?), and to my thinking that’s a fairly big foot for a woman. They had to have been men’s socks, and since I wear a size 10 these would nicely do the job. I bought them and headed back to the hotel.

As I kicked off my shoes and pulled a pair of socks over my feet, I realized it was going to take some serious stretching of the socks to even come close to getting them over my heels. They were indeed women’s socks.

It took a bit of work, and few words I probably shouldn’t have said, but I finally got the socks to stretch just enough to barely slide over my heel. If they’d slid off my feet as I walked to my car I wouldn’t have been surprised. But they somehow stayed on.

I picked up my friend and her son and we headed for Ft. Lauderdale. On the way there we decided to stop first at the hotel so my guests could drop their luggage off in my room. Since the New Year’s Eve festivities would probably run into the wee hours of the morning, I'd invited my friend and her boy to sleep in my bed. I would snooze in the recliner.

We were told by the desk clerk (by now she and I were almost on a first name basis), where in Ft. Lauderdale the festivities were being held. Now, maybe I misunderstood her, or maybe the clerk finally gave in to her cruel streak, for I followed her directions to a T, but to no avail. Not only was there no celebration taking place where she said it’d be, but we drove up and down the highway, from one end of Ft. Lauderdale to the other, and nothing we saw even remotely resembled a celebration.

By 10 pm we were starving. We hadn’t eaten dinner for we'd planned on buying it at the festivities in town. So, we gave up the hunt for the New Years celebration, stopped at a Taco Bell, bought takeout, and drove back to the hotel.

We ate our dinner, watched a little TV, and then went to bed. You know, there was a time in my life when I could sleep anywhere: on the ground, on the floor, in a “love” seat with my legs dangling over the armrest, and certainly in a recliner. My, my, my how things change with age. When I woke up the next morning it was all I could do crawl out of that tired old recliner. The muscles of my back were tighter than a training bra on Dolly Parton and I was twisted up like a pretzel. I wondered if I’d ever walk upright again.

A few stretching exercises and a long, hot shower proved to be of little help, but being the gentleman that I am, and because I didn’t want my friend and her son to feel badly about taking my bed, I carried our luggage down to the lobby and we checked out.

Needless to say, the 3 hour drive home was nothing short of torturous, and it took a week of muscle relaxants, pain killers, and a lot of stretching to straighten out my back.

All in all, that trip was an unusually adventuresome New Years holiday, which is what I was seeking; and that, my friends, brings to mind what someone once told me, “be careful what you ask for, you might just get it.”