Chapter Seven: Spill
We headed back up to our room by way of Roaring Fork. On account of the free refills. Once in our room, we noticed that despite the assurances from the front desk CM I spoke with earlier, the stained bedspread was still splashed across the floor not unlike Paris Hilton after a hard night of partying.
My wife put ZZUBY in the shower to rinse her off and I headed back to the front desk. You might be wondering why I didn’t just get on the phone. The reason was simple. In my two previous phone conversations with housekeeping on matters unrelated to the stain on the bedspread not of our own making, I had significant difficulties communicating with them.
I don’t want to cast aspersions, but let’s just say I had some challenges understanding the language of the housekeeping staff. I don’t want to start a class war, or get elected to the House of Representatives or anything, but it occurs to me that while we can’t all agree on immigration policy or even the assimilation of new immigrants, I believe we
can agree that front line customer service people, of whatever origin or nationality, should be able to communicate effectively. Can’t we at least start there?
Reminds me of the time I tried to order some Pepsi One at the Taco Bell. Back when our Taco Bell sold Pepsi One. Those were 15 really good minutes back in 2001. I pulled up to the drive through and ordered two steak gorditas and a large Pepsi One.
“One Pepsi?” came the voice through the speaker.
“No,” I said. “Large Pepsi One.”
“Si. One Pepsi.”
“No, not one Pepsi. One
Pepsi One.”
“Si, senor, One Pepsi. Large, no?”
You want me to say that at this point I just settled for a Diet Pepsi and moved on. You obviously don’t know me very well. I eventually got someone who could understand me and was able to fill a large cup with Pepsi One. Mixed with a half cup of Shug Avery pee, I’m sure.
So when my phone encounters with the Lodge housekeeping staff started to take on this kind of Pepsi One type farce, I decided I would just go to the front desk staff.
So back I went. Wet and a little cold. And also a little annoyed. Not so much because the bedspread was stained with I don’t want to know what, but more because it hadn’t been cleaned up, removed and set ablaze in the hazardous waste incinerator just behind the Italian Pavilion. (I have no clue where the hazardous waste incinerator is, or whether Disney even has a hazradous waste incinerator. I just threw that in for a joke. No need to avoid Italy. Well, maybe there is, but for
other reasons.)
Front Desk Dude was seemingly just as annoyed as I was that it hadn’t been taken care of. He got on the phone and looked rather animated. I stood at the end of the counter and dripped water. And wondered whether I should give Obama a second look. On account of his name being O-bama and me being a life long Bama fan. After a spell, Front Desk Dude came over and said “it will be taken care of. I
assure you.” He said this very matter of factly. So I believed him.
Although I was annoyed by the whole bedspread stain episode, I wasn't raged up about it. Yeah, it was gross, and no, you don’t expect to see that at a Disney hotel, or any hotel when you’re spending more than 60 ducks a night for the room. But I figured things happen. I just wanted it cleaned up. I wasn’t looking for anything else. In times past I would have gone all post-register journal ZZUB on them. But with so much to be thankful for, a disgusting stain wasn’t enough to raise my ire.
I moseyed into the Merc because it had been about 90 minutes since I was last in there and the merchandise might have changed. Also, I knew that ZZUBY’s bath was not quite done. So I had time to kill. Actually, I was looking for some Mickey Newtons. I love those cookies. But I reckon it had more trans fat than the food police will tolerate and so they’ve been removed from the shelves. Gone. Like Chuck from
Happy Days. Never to be seen or heard from again.
I went back upstairs and my wife said, “the phone rang, but I couldn’t get to it.” Sure enough, the light was blinking on our phone. We had a voice mail. I picked up the phone and followed the ridiculously long voice mail primer and eventually got my message: we had a package waiting for us at the front desk.
I was at once excited and annoyed. I was just down there! But what could it be? My mind was awash in the possibilities. But I’ve had some experience with tracking down “packages” before, so I lowered my expectations. Like the people of Iowa and New Hampshire.
My first year of law school we were poor. Which isn’t to say we weren’t poor in my 2d and 3d year, but at the outset of law school, we were
really poor. Just before classes started, I came home from work and there was a note in our mail box that we had a package waiting for us. And it didn’t fit in our mailbox. We could retrieve it at the main post office. I was giddy. I just knew it was a care package from one of our parents. Probably with food. Or cigarettes to trade to the other idiots in law school for something more useful. Like food. That wasn’t ramen noodles.
I went back to our apartment and grabbed a map to locate the main post office. It was clear across town. The main road to get there was a turnpike. But being poor, and not wanting to spend any money on tolls, I mapped out a longer route on surface streets. I grabbed my wife and told her about our package and we hopped in the car and off we went.
In rush hour. On surface streets.
We arrived at the post office about 5 minutes before it closed. I dashed in the door to make sure I was in line. I waited. Forever. Eventually, I got to a window and I handed the lady my card. She looked at it and then told me that they didn’t have my package. It was left in one of the oversized bins at our apartment complex. She turned the card over and there was a letter written on it. That was the bin I should look in.
"Thanks for mutton," I mumbled.
I walked back out to the car where my wife was eagerly anticipating the package we dreamed was filled with goodness. And Swiss Cake Rolls. I told her the bad news. She married an idiot.
We drove all the way back across town. Got back to our apartment. Found the oversized bins, found the one marked with the letter on our card and reached inside.
To find the phone book.
Not since I looked in the bathroom sink at the age of 23 and saw an alarming amount of hair have I been that disappointed. Eventually, we laughed about it.
Weeks later we discovered that the map I looked at was outdated. The so-called turnpike was no longer a toll road. Insult, meet injury.
When I got back to the front desk at the Lodge, I told Front Desk Dude I had received a voice mail that there was a package for me. He said, “Oh yes. When it arrived it attracted a lot of attention.”
Which immediately made me curious and excited. My anticipation turned to annoyance when it took ten minutes for the CMs to find this attention attracting package. You’d think they would remember where it was. I continued to drip. And then a young CM came out with a plastic wrapped fruit deal. It was really cool looking. The fruit was cut into flower shapes. And there were chocolate covered strawberries, too. I don’t care much for strawberries. But dipped in chocolate, they’re good. Let’s face it, you could dip a booger in chocolate and it would be edible.
I hauled the surprisingly heavy pail of fruit up to our room. I set it down on the table and we began to devour it. Like the girls from
Facts of Life at the craft service table. No sooner had I ripped the plastic off and eaten my first chocolate covered strawberry, there came a knock at the door. It was a housekeeper.
She was holding a set of sheets.
I looked at the sheets and looked at her and swallowed the piece of fruit in my mouth. “Ma’am, we need the bedspread replaced. Not just the sheets. The bedspread has a stain on it.”
“Oh. Not just the sheets.”
“No, not just the sheets.”
“I be right back.” And she was gone. I left the door propped open for her and returned to the table to take the good and take the bad and devour more fruit. The housekeeper was back in short order and then began to unmake and then re-make the bed. We stood to the side. Like idiots. Eating our fruit. Slurping it down and making general food enjoyment noises.
I thought, “this must be what the animals feel like on Kilamanjaro Safari. As people ride by and watch them eat." The housekeeper continued her job while we ate attention attracting fruit.
We offered her some. We’re not animals.
But she demurred.
And then she was gone. And I had to figure out how to save the remainder of the fruit. It was no easy chore. The pail didn’t fit in our refrigerator. So I had to pull all the skewers off and de-fruit them. Then we wrapped it all up in the plastic and shoved it in the fridge.
We were supposed to have been back in the Magic Kingdom hours ago and we planned to eat at Cosmic Rays. But earlier in the day we had decided to slow it down. So I suggested we just eat at Roaring Fork and then head over to the MK. I was feeling burgerish. So was my wife. Around 6:00 or so we headed down to RF and had ourselves some quality burgers and fries. RF doesn’t have a lot of variety but their burgers are quite tasty.
We took the boat over to the MK and once inside the park, decided to head toward Tomorrowland to check out the Monsters Inc. Laugh Floor. But by the time we got to the end of Mainstreet and hung a right, we were all needing to use the bathrooms. So we stopped off at the bathrooms next to the Plaza.
On my way into the Men’s Room, I stepped over this.
It was also here on the way out. So I took this picture of it. And while I stood there waiting on my wife and daughters, I pondered this pile of puke. How did it come to be here. In front of the bathroom? I mean, it was so close to the bathroom. What was wrong with this person that he couldn’t make it the extra 20 or 30 feet to a toilet? Can you imagine the urgency he must have felt?
There’s no real thrill ride in the vicinity. Maybe he had been on the Tea Cups or Space Mountain and got off and felt ill. But why didn't he stop in one of the bathrooms near those rides? Maybe he thought he could walk it off?
It must have been like Thanksgiving. You’re fully bloated but not quite ready to hurl. But then you go out in the yard to toss the ball around and you catch one in the gut and that’s all she wrote. You turn and ruin someone’s rose bush.
Not that
that’s ever happened to me.
But one time, I was at lunch at the home of one of our city’s leaders. I was not the guest of the host and hostess. I was a guest of one of their guests. It’s one of those southern things where you get invited for dinner, but it’s really lunch and you don’t really know anyone there but you’re told to make a good impression.
Rest assured, I didn’t.
The city leader and his wife served ribs. Which in and of itself is mean. I was in a suit. You can’t eat ribs in a suit. Although I did. These were the BEST ribs I had ever eaten. There was also some slap-your-mamma good baked beans and the best potato salad I ever had.
I really need to consider just why it is that I'm such a fool for potato salad. I can't get enough of the stuff. I'd sell the Schpup! for a good bowl of the stuff.
I had eaten plenty of ribs and had a couple heapin’ helpings of potato salad and beans. It was all so good. It was
scary good. Like, what did they put in it good? We finished eating and I was sitting to the right of some fancy looking lady. I was thinking, “Man, I am so full.” Then I thought, “but this is so good, and I’ll never get invited back here again. Maybe I have room for a little more.”
In the history of mankind, there have only been three decisions which were dumber than my decision to have another couple of ribs and spoon full of potato salad. No sooner had I swallowed my last bite of potato salad, then I realized the error of my ways. I imagine this is how Harry Reid felt the morning he woke up and realized the Surge was working.
Speaking of surge, that’s
exactly what I could feel rushing up my esophagus. I swallowed it back and tried to discreetly ask where the bathroom was. I quickly excused myself and made my way there; sweat now beading up on my brow. I could feel the surge returning. With vigor. And intensity. I managed to close the door, turn on the light and fan, lift the lid and begin blowing violent chunks of lunch into the bowl. At the same time, I was having to restrain myself to make sure I didn’t make any huge vomit noises. The bathroom was right behind the dinner table. I didn't need to attact any attention. NOFlowerShapedPailOfFruit.
I also had to make sure my aim was perfect. It was bad enough I was refunding; I couldn’t make a mess doing it. I was in there for quite some time. Eventually, I sat down on the floor next to the bowl. My legs had gone weak. And I had more to come. It took almost as long coming up as it did going down. Long enough that over the din of the fan I could hear, "he's sure been gone for a long time, should we go check on him?"
I washed up my hands and emerged from the bathroom, somewhat ashen and more than a little disheveled. Not so weak that I turned down the delicious looking lemon ice box pie, mind you. I’d have to be dead three days before I turned down pie, but I limited myself to only one serving.
That was my
most embarassing vomit ever.
My
most urgent vomit was in 1996. I was out with some friends at this putt-putt, go-cart place. It also had one of those spinning deals. It was two or three circles and you were strapped in the middle. Supposedly they use something like this to train astronauts. Why do I listen to advice from carnies? He also said because of where you were in the middle of the spinning action, you don’t get sick. So I tried it. 10 seconds into the ride, if we can call it that, I was in serious trouble. But my buds were with me and we don’t admit weakness in front of our friends. I took my punishment like a man. I yelled like it was fun and prayed that God would just kill me. God did not answer that prayer.
When I got off the torturous device, my legs were rubbery and I knew I was going to viciously hurl and soon. The rubbery legs were nothing to be ashamed of, but blowing chunks after a ride ain’t cool. So I had to find a quiet place to let go of the impending furious stream of grey sludge now parked in the back of my throat. I made some excuse about needing to get something out of my truck and as soon as I was in the parking lot, out of view of my friends, I found the nearest bush and hurled breakfast, lunch and dinner at the bushes.
Even in my extreme sense of urgency, I still managed to make it to a bathroom or a bush out of sight of my friends. So what on earth happened to this poor guy to make him lose it all right there in front of the bathroom? He got tackled on the one yard line. How bad could it have been that he couldn’t go the extra few feet? Sadly, we will never know.
But it’s a lesson for us all. Know when to say when. Just say no. Go the distance. And three other clichés which all mean don’t leave a steaming pile of your digestive juices on the ground. It’s uncool, dude.
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Click Here For Chapter Eight
. I actually had my b/f pause the show he was watching just so I could read this out loud to him. Zzub you have always made me laugh, but this installment was hilarious
!!
