I've always had bad luck. I've tried to change my bad luck; I've hoped to change it, but Murphy's Law is part of my DNA. I've come to the conclusion that nothing will ever change that.
I am a jinx.
I want found a four-leaf clover in an expansive lawn at Niagara Falls. I kept that four-leaf clover thinking that it would be my good luck charm.
Nope.
A friend once gave me a rabbit's foot. I thought it was kind of gross and rarely handled it, but it didn't change my luck.
One of my students once gave me one of those black balls full of liquid that had a small glass window that, when you shook the ball, your fortune would come up in the window.
My fortune always said, "Ask me tomorrow."
Several years ago my husband and I were going to Florida to visit our son. We decided to stay in a hotel so that our grandson could come swim in the pool. It sounded like a great idea, so what could go wrong? With my DNA, everything!
It all started when we checked in to the hotel. We are like most people and try very hard to haul everything out of the car and up to our room in one trip. We usually are able to grab a luggage cart in the hotel lobby where we pile a mountain of luggage, bags, pillows, snacks, the dog bed, a bag with my husband's CPAP, dog bowls, my husband's vast array of medications and vitamins, and his book bag that he never opens. It's "just in case" stuff. It's absolutely ridiculous.
We look like a gypsy family on the move. It's The Beverly Hillbillies on a luggage cart. My husband used to fill grocery bags with all of his odds and ends and vitamins, until I told him that we looked like country hicks dragging grocery sacks full of hygiene products into a hotel. I absolutely refused to be seen walking with the luggage cart or near him at all. It was just too embarrassing. I bought some large, plastic decorative bags and tossed all the odds and ends in them so we wouldn't look stupid.
To make matters worse, our little chihuahua/dachshund mix dog despises walking on slick floors. He likes carpet, and no hotel lobby has anything but slick floors. So he won't walk. We either have to drag him across the floors by his leash, or pick him up and hold him. Not to mention, he's deathly afraid of the luggage cart.
So anyone who is sitting in the lobby of any hotel we enter has a wonderful view of a comedy show. On this trip, as soon as we got up to our room, my husband realized he couldn't find the room key card. He searched everywhere. Every pocket, every nook and cranny on his body, and all over the luggage cart. But the key cards were missing.
Frustrated, I sighed and leaned against the wall next to our door while he went back downstairs to the front desk to ask about our key cards. A few minutes later, he returned looking sheepish because he had walked off and forgot them on the counter.
Tired, I went into the room and started unpacking the huge assortment of junk we had brought with us. One of the bags my husband had brought along contained some diet Dr. Pepper canned sodas, my favorite drink. So I took the cans of soda and put them in the small refrigerator located inside a cabinet.
Later, we went to visit our son and his family for dinner and then returned to the hotel for the night. I was thirsty, so I thought I would grab one of the sodas out of the refrigerator. When I opened the small refrigerator door, I had a terrible shock. One of the sodas had exploded, and brown stains covered the entire interior of the refrigerator. It had exploded so hard that chunks of brown soda ice had formed at the top of the fridge.
The people who had stayed in the room before us had turned up the refrigerator as high as it would go. We never bothered to check and thought everything would be okay. Obviously not. I stood there staring at the puddle in the bottom of the fridge and at the brown ice surrounding the inside. Even as I watched, the ice started melting and creating a small brown stream running from the bottom of the refrigerator across the hotel room floor.
Now this is where I should have made another decision other than the one I chose. You see, I was raised in a home where my mother taught me to clean up after myself. We had chores when we were kids, and in order to get a small allowance, we had to clean our rooms, take turns vacuuming and dusting, and make sure the kitchen was clean. I worked hard for that 50 cents a week. I also never forgot what my dad always told me, "The longer you put off cleaning up a mess, the worse it gets." So I have never depended on anyone to clean up after me. I've always taken care of my messes and cleaned up after myself.
So standing there, and staring at the small explosion of brown liquid spilling out of the refrigerator, I knew what I had to do. I had to clean it up. I grabbed the tray that sat under the coffee maker and a washcloth and began sweeping the brown soda out of the refrigerator and onto the tray. I went to the bathroom sink and emptied it, and then went back for another load.
There was still ice encasing the whole inside, so I found one of my metal nail files and began chipping away at the brown ice to get it all off. It took me an hour to clean that ridiculous refrigerator, but I finally removed all signs of exploded soda and dried out the inside of the fridge with towels. I looked down into that clean refrigerator and was satisfied. It was sparkling white and probably cleaner than it had been in years.
A few minutes later I was ready to take a shower because I felt sticky from the sweet soda. Going into the bathroom, I realized I had used all the towels. There they sat, brown stains covering the pristine white towels and a washcloth that looked like it had been dragged through the mud for years. Sighing, I went to the hotel phone and called the front desk asking for more towels.
A few minutes later, a lovely girl showed up at the door with an armload of towels. She asked for the dirty ones so that she could take them downstairs and put them in the wash. As I handed her the disgusting brown-stained towels, she stared at them, horrified."What happened?" she asked. I told her about the soda explosion in the refrigerator and that I had carefully cleaned up everything.
I was so proud that I had taken it upon myself to clean up my own mess. I stood there with a beaming smile on my face. The girl looked at me with a frown and just shook her head."I wish you would have called us," she said. "We could have easily taken care of this and not ended up with ruined towels."I just stared at her. It had never dawned on me that there was a chance the soda might not come out of the towels. Then I looked over on the bathroom counter and saw the little packets of makeup remover, which indicated to me that they didn't like any marks on their pristine white towels. They sure did have some major stains on them now!
She left the hotel room and marched down the hallway carrying sodden brown towels. I felt like a complete idiot. It never dawned on me to call the front desk and ask for maintenance to come up and clean up the refrigerator. Lesson learned. Until next time. And there ALWAYS is a next time.
