elephant smuggling interior decorators

Another training session sent me out of town this past week, and with this trip, my total airplane experience in the past six months has eclipsed my total airplane experience during the first 34 years of my life.

I’ve actually been enjoying my time spent speeding through the sky…my only real complaint being that I can’t open the window, which would enable me to spit down upon all the cars and rooftops that we pass over.

I don’t even mind living the hotel room life. For someone that has never traveled to any far away destinations, places like Indiana and Minnesota seem exotic. And, when I try hard enough to ignore the cigarette burns in the carpeting and carefully rearrange the sheets so that the suspicious stains are nowhere near my head, I can almost image that I’m in a four star resort.

My first night this week started out exactly like this. Shoes were placed over the holes in the carpet. The sheets were precisely positioned so that nothing but clean, white linen was situated next to my head. And the drapes were drawn so that the neon glow announcing ‘Vacancy – Free HBO!’ would not burn through my eyelids and leave gaping holes in my retinas.

I was living the good life, right up until 4:30 the next morning. This was the moment that a loud, thunderous ‘bang’ sounded from the room directly above mine.

Jolted from the beach where Sarah Michelle Gellar and I were about to enjoy a glass of Chardonnay before skinny dipping in the ocean, I rolled over and closed my eyes…hoping to be transported back into the dream from which I had been yanked.

These hopes were dashed, however, when a succession of scraping noises erupted from above, followed closely by a series of bumps and footfalls cascading back and forth, from bathroom to bed and back again.

Was this person an elephant smuggler, transporting them across state lines to sell on the black market? Or perhaps this was an interior decorating student doing some late night cramming before the final exam? Curious as I was, I simply wanted sleep.

Unfortunately, neither sleep nor the answer was to come. 4:30 melted into 5:30, and 5:30 into 6:30 with the bangs, scrapes, and footsteps continuing at a constant rate.

Finally, at 6:45, the noise stopped as suddenly as it began…just in time for the alarm clock to announce the start of a new day.

After a quick shower, I wearily approached the front desk. Bleary eyed, I rang the little bell on the counter and was greeted by a well-rested looking morning attendant.

“Can I help you, sir?” she perkily asked.

“Please,” I begged, “can you give me a different room. I’m here for the remainder of the week, and the guy above me made so much noise that I couldn’t get any sleep.”

“Certainly,” she told me. “You know, we’ve had complaints about him from some of our other guests too. I’ll just put you in a room down at the end of the hall.”

In my weakened and fatigued mental state, I didn’t even wonder why, if other complaints were lodged, they continued to let this guy continue operating heavy equipment machinery in his second floor room. I was just glad to be out from under him.

Shortly afterward, with a large coffee in hand, I arrived at the training session minutes before the 8:00 start time. And as our presenter introduced herself, I could feel my eyelids drooping ever so slightly, until finally, amidst the lulling talk of projected sales revenue and key demographic targets, they shut completely.

At last, I had found peace.

on ice

The snow that has all but crippled the Northeast has single handedly shut down schools, delayed the mail, and has caused otherwise profit seeking enterprises to put profits on hold…albeit for the short term.

There is no better evidence of this than the fact that all the local malls in the area delayed opening their doors last week by a full two hours. Two hours that forced all the ‘mall walking’ senior citizens to delay their morning routine, have a second bowl of fiber chocked cereal, and then find greener pastures on which to tread.

For me, however, the snow has caused headaches beyond lack of early bird shopping and walking. Because, due to the multiple inches of snow covering the highways, all of my sales calls for the past two weeks cancelled. And while it’s true that this lack of sales calls most certainly indicates a lack of sales, this was not my main grievance. Rather, this lack of appointments outside of the office meant that I was forced to stay inside the office.

An office with no windows. An office which has been serving as a Petri dish of viral growth for the past few months. An office that is drab, dingy, and depressing.

I relish setting sales calls because of the opportunity it provides to escape this otherwise miserable dungeon in which we store items to sell to companies...companies with amenities such as natural lighting and coffee that doesn’t closely resemble tepid sludge.

So when a company in an adjacent town actually kept the appointment we had previously set, I was in my car and down the road in a flash...fleeting goodbyes as I raced out the door, a trail of papers fluttering in my wake.

It was late morning as I pulled alongside a parking meter across the street from the small company I was heading into. I gathered my brochures and catalogs, slung my laptop over my shoulder, and grabbed my samples from the backseat. After carefully balancing everything with exact precision, much like a skilled waiter does when delivering eight drinks to a large table of diners, I headed across the street to the main entrance.

I had crossed the street and stepped over the curb when my foot fell upon a rather large patch of ice. What happened next was exactly what you would expect to happen when someone loaded down with multiple bags, briefcases, and papers steps onto an immense continent sized patch of ice…the result looking very much like something out of a Three Stooges movie, minus two stooges, of course.

My legs flew out from under me, the weight of my laptop wrenched my left shoulder, the samples and brochures which had previously been so carefully balanced went sprawling across the sidewalk, and I went down in a flourish, ripping a hole in the knee of my slacks as I landed.

As I lay flat on my back, I turned my head and noticed a miniature pair of Keds directly in front of me. Gazing upwards, I saw a small five year old child staring down at me, her mouth wide open with what I like to image was awe at my spectacular Olympian display of clumsiness.

Wanting to use this embarrassing predicament to impart some type of wisdom that I had gained from years of experience, I said, “Boy, this ice sure is slickery.”

Not 'slick', not 'slippery', but ‘slickery’. Not only did I fail to impart something deep and substantial, I didn’t even use the proper English.

I struggled to stand up, back aching and shoulder throbbing, quickly gathered what I could, and trudged off to my car.

And as I sit here, I can't help but think that I'm single-handedly corrupting the youth of today...one make-believe word at a time.