Hotel Room Follies

Hotel-Room Follies

The way airlines charge for every amenity from pillows to baggage, I wonder how soon hotels will follow suit. I can only imagine. . .

     When we check into our favorite hotel, the calm-as-a-tortoise owner says, “Would you like to rent some towels, Mr. and Mrs. Levellie?” Although I won the Talkathon USA contest ten years in a row and my husband is a preacher, we are both speechless.

     “What do you mean, rent towels? We’ve stayed here for the last five years whenever we visit our daughter and her family. You’ve never charged for towels before.”

     He smiles, feigning patience. “It’s our new system. Vandalism was so high that our general manager required us to charge for towels. But if you’d rather not do that, you can use the body-sized blow dryer we’ve installed in all the bathrooms. Many of our guests prefer it.”

     My face turns four shades of crimson as I imagine myself standing in front of a huge blow dryer, body fat jiggling at seventy-five mph. “No thank you,” I say. “We’ll borrow some Dora the Explorer and Bob the Builder towels from our daughter. Any other changes we should know about?”

     “Oh yes.” He grins. “We’ve replaced the mini-steam irons with full-sized irons.”

     “Great,” says my husband. “Last time it took Jeanette forty minutes to iron my shirt with that little Barbie-sized iron and ironing board you gave us.”

     The owner looks sympathetic. “Well, I think you’ll find this iron much faster. But be careful when you use it—the chain is only a foot long.”

     “Chain?” I howl.

     “Yes, we can’t have them stolen like the towels. We chain them to the ironing boards.”

     I sigh as I pick up our room key and turn to my husband. “At least we have a bed to sleep in, Honey.”

     “Oh, you want a bed?” says the owner, eyebrows rising. “That will be an extra forty dollars, please.”

©      From My Heart to Yours: Whenever we stay in a hotel room, I check the desk drawer to make sure there’s a Gideon Bible in it. My stepdad, who changed from an ornery sinner to a loving saint when he met Jesus, spent the last thirty years of his life as a Gideon. Some of the few times I saw him cry was when he told stories of sharing the Word of God and the transformations that took place because of the gospel.

The above is a chapter from my humor/inspirational book, The Heart of Humor, available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or by contacting me at jeanettelevellie@gmail.com. Drawing copyright Ron Levellie. 

P.S. The blessed winner of Rose Chandler Johnson's novel My Father's House is Karen Lange at Write Now. Congratulations, Karen! I hope you will enjoy this Southern novel as much as I did!

Have you stayed in hotels much? What's the weirdest experience you've had with one?