Too Harsh for a Laugh?

Dearest Rachel –

You’ll remember staying at the one in Jerusalem; now we’ve gotten ourselves moved into a room at one in Nazareth. And for whatever reason, I can’t help but be reminded (as unfairly as it might be applied to them) by this song:

I’m pretty sure you would have shared in the giggle between me and Daniel over that. The trouble is, the term ‘mediocre,’ despite being “somewhere between good and bad,” tends to have more negative connotations than positive. In our competitive world, anything less than ‘the best’ is considered suboptimal. As Lily Tomlin put, our species is the only one that plays to win, rather than playing to just play, which explains why we have more than our fair share of losers.

But the fact is, like Uncle Rand, we have “stayed in all kinds of establishments” throughout our lives. Some of them have been amazing; you remember the presidential suite we stayed in Vancouver before our first cruise that occupied half the floor. Jenn and Bill staying in the room taking up the rest of the floor, while my folks (thanks to Dad having acted as travel agent the year before for twenty of his cousins and their spouses) had been upgraded to the penthouse suite, taking up the entirety of the top floor. I literally can’t see how anything could top that.

On the other hand, we have stayed in some, ah… truly suboptimal places. There was that fishing shack in Sauk Village that I booked at the last minute when we were planning our trip through Wisconsin. The bed took up most of the tiny room, and there were no amenities to speak of. We had to consider ourselves fortunate that it had a tiny television in the corner; although what we saw actually spurred a lifelong fascination with Mystery Science Theater 3000. It wasn’t intentional, but I discovered by that experience that if I were to screw up a task badly enough, I wouldn’t be expected (or even asked) to do it again.

Then again, you didn’t always hit home runs with your arranged accommodations, either. Remember the cottages in the middle of the island we stayed at after Jim Bretz left for the convalescent home, and could no longer keep up the lakeshore cottages your family stayed at for literal generations? With its old-to-the-point-of-sagging furniture, and non-functional oven (not to mention the standing water in what constituted the back yard, which served as a breeding ground for mosquitoes, several times more so than nearer to the shore), it was a most unpleasant stay. Of course, you managed to book the Meier cottage (what you had always thought of as “Miz Fay’s place” previously) the following year, where we would return every year thenceforth until your final year.

So we’ve definitely had better, and definitely had worse. It’s a broad band to travel within, and to tag our new hotel with a label like ‘mediocre’ seems unfairly harsh just for a laugh or two. However, even when compared to the Island Hotel in Netanya, with its separate bedrooms and baths, it’s not particularly impressive, so it already takes second place on just this trip. So there’s that.

Additionally, I had to go downstairs to the concierge in order to replace one of our key cards, which wasn’t registering, thereby keeping us locked out if we didn’t have the other card. But the real issue last night was entirely my own fault; I really should have known better, but they don’t seem to make plain power strips anymore, only surge protectors. And surge protectors and adaptors just. do. not. play together nicely. At least we can make do with ungrounded adapters going forward. It’s why we don’t take our best computers when we travel.

Such are the lessons learned when you don’t always stay at the fanciest places. We don’t need to, frankly; but while making fun of such a place seems excessively cruel, sometimes you’ve just got to laugh, right?

Talk to you later, honey; we’ve running late, and we’ve got to get going. Wish us luck; we’re going to need it.