Hotel Stays Can Be Dangerous

Groupthink. Most are familiar with the term. When many react in the same direction, usually leading to mass hysteria. It’s the very thing that makes concert-goers go wild and crowd surf people over their heads. The mindset of soccer fans stampeding out of a stadium, crushing everything in their path. And even Obi Wan Kenobi refers to it as "a disturbance in The Force." That little ripple in the ocean that gathers energy as it builds into a tidal wave before crashing onto the shore.

My sons had a hockey tournament out of town. We piled into the car and drove in freezing weather to watch multiple games in a freezing cold rink. After checking into the hotel, my young teen daughter was miserably cold and not feeling well. She asked to stay in the room while we went to the late game. The rink was close, the hotel was very nice, I left her behind.

It was near midnight when we returned. Slipping my keycard in the door, it wouldn’t open. I banged on the door while my husband went for new keys. Only silence answered. I banged and called, banged and called, and banged and called as the second set of keys didn’t work and my husband went back down for a security guard. Children sometimes sleep very deeply and I wasn’t really afraid. But the staff must have been doing more than crowd surfing at a concert that night, because they were unconcerned and unhelpful, and stared at us with vacant eyed incompetence.

As I continued to pound and call, a crowd began to gather. My teenage sons along with their teammates, other moms and dads, hotel guests that had awakened from my banging, and also the crowd of popcorn munching groupies that choose to hang around my family on a Saturday night because it always has more entertainment value than any event at the Centurytel. The boys were rumbling, teenage testosterone building, shirt sleeves being rolled up, shoulder pads retrieved from bags, as they excitedly offered to crash the door for me.

One mom walked up again and asked if I thought everything could possibly be all right. As I looked at her face, her eyes crinkled in concern, I felt the ripple. That ripple far out in the ocean, breaking the surface of the water, to begin silently gathering energy and head toward land.

I stared at the mom. I stared back at the door. My chest constricted, my stomach flipped, and I pummeled it with my fists, no longer caring who I woke. Wild thoughts began to build. Had she slipped in the bathroom and was lying blue lipped and ashen faced on the tile floor? Had she found my bottle of Benedryl and accidentally taken 50? Had the serial killer Dexter broken in and was even now sharpening his knives as we were trapped outside. No...Showtime’s Dexter didn’t kill children. But in Season 2, he had that really freaky girlfriend who did!

The crowd rumbled, the boys flexed the young, strong muscles possessed only by unemployed teens with gym memberships. The popcorn groupies munched louder, the room began to spin, I tore at my hair, I crushed my sunglasses in my pocket, the room began spinning in that ocean of chaos and fear. The wave gathered energy and began to crest. I caved and gave the boys the green light to crash.

Young men’s bodies began flying through the air, crashing against the door, splintering paint and wood. One grabbed the door handle, one called out instructions on perfect foot placement for each thud, one grabbed the fire extinguisher for a battering ram and charged down the hall. Fire alarms went off. People poured into the halls. The police showed up. Through the melee a tiny voice called out from the darkness. "Mom, what’s going on? I was sleeping."

As the crowd dispersed the policemen viewed the scattered debris, the broken door, the screeching hotel manager. He turned toward me, yanked out his ticket pad, then gently patted me on the back while he began to ticket the hotel for code violations. I requested a quick exit with a bag over my head in the darkness of night if the crowd had their fill of entertainment for the evening.

Stepping over the remnants of splintered wood, tufts of hair, and discarded popcorn cups, the kind policeman cleared us a path and we left for another hotel. The wave had washed ashore, and I thought maybe someday...I would stay home and knit.