The venue was Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas. It really is a palace. All sections of the main ballroom were set up just for me. Well, maybe not just for me. According to the giant posters around the room, I was first up followed by First Lady Barbara Bush.
I don’t mind telling you, I was a bit full of myself. I was thinking, “Look at me. Small town boy goes to the big city and does good.”
I decided to walk down the hall and arrange my hair. I don’t comb it anymore. I just arrange it!
A nicely dressed woman walked up to me and said, “What are you doing here?”
Ignoring her borderline rude approach and, without looking away from the mirror, I said, “When you get a moment, check out the meeting agenda and you will see that I am your speaker.”
“You don’t say,” was her only response. I turned to see a late middle-aged woman staring at me over the top of comically, over-sized dark-rimmed glasses which seemed to be missing a rhinestone or two.
I continued, “No ma’am, I don’t say. But as a matter of fact, I am the keynote speaker.” I just knew that would impress her. But it didn’t.
She huffed and said, “Well, you must be a nervous speaker.”
“Ma’am, I don’t even think about it anymore.”
“Well,” she fired the final shot saying, “You are in the ladies’ room. Maybe you should think about that!”
I told my brother Steve that (mostly) true story of me being in the ladies’ room, knowing full well that there was no way he would be able to top it. I was wrong.
Steve was in the American Airlines departure terminal in Los Angeles Airport, AKA LAX. Typical of California as the birthplace of Valley Speak and political correctness, the public restrooms are situated so that the locations of the men’s and women’s restrooms trade places from one terminal to the next.
It so happened that brother Steve, not paying a bit of attention, marched purposefully into a restroom where he was forced to make an emergency decision by the fact that this particular restroom had none of the wall-mounted appliances that are so popular in traditional men’s facilities.
Struck by the architectural oversight, Steve also noticed a social shortcoming: This men’s room had no men. Lost in his own confusion, Steve was startled to see a second person enter the restroom. He was a she. When she spotted Steve, she instantly decided that she was in the men’s room. Surely you wouldn’t see a 250-pound woman with a handlebar mustache in the ladies room. (I won’t even mention the boots and spurs if you don’t try to convince me I am not adopted!) Steve was relieved to see the interloper do a pinpoint pivot and turn herself around, and in a flurry of high heel clicks, she motored herself to the relative safety of the terminal.
Steve waited to hear the scream that thankfully did not come.
Only now did Steve notice several pairs of feet behind the row of gray painted stalls. And only now did he regain the presence of mind necessary to calculate his retreat. In a panic, he noticed a large trash can with a plastic liner. And with that option, he did the only thing possible… he pulled out the plastic liner, tied a knot in it and, as if he were an asexual janitor faithfully making his rounds, he dragged the bag out of the restroom and made his escape to the Delta terminal until it was time to board his flight!
Is there a moral to these stories? I am sure there must be one but for the life of me I can’t think what it might be!
Perhaps it’s that we shouldn’t lose sight of our bearings. Know where you are in relation to your surroundings.
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