“Sometimes the amount of self-control it takes to not say what’s on my mind is so immense, I need a nap afterward.” In my younger adult years, after I married and had small children, I took a second job on weekends as a hotel desk clerk/night auditor. After working my regular job all week, I would go home Friday evening, try unsuccessfully to sleep for a few hours, then report to my part time job to work the 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. shift on both Friday and Saturday nights. There were a few nights when I actually fell asleep at the front desk. Granted, this was no flea bitten hotel, but it wasn’t a high class one either. It was three stories, all access from inside hallways, with a restaurant and bar which stayed open on weekends until 2 a.m. And the rates were not cheap, except of course for the four or six hour “short-stay” rate. A condition of my employment was that should anyone I know check into the hotel for the night or just a short stay, I was not to acknowledge that I knew them. It happened on several occasions and I played the part. It also happened that at 2 a.m. as the bar closed, there were folks who wanted a room “just for a few minutes” and if there was one available, I would rent it to them for 4 or 6 hours. There were times when a “clean” room was not available, as it had already been rented out for a short stay, but people were so desperate for a room, they didn’t care if it was clean and even offered to pay me under the table to let them use the room. So, back to the quote at the beginning of this blog: “Sometimes the amount of self-control it takes to not say what’s on my mind is so immense, I need a nap afterward. ” Or maybe it’s just that I had been up for almost 24 hours straight.
