An Elephant in the Room

Having traveled for most of my life, I have numerous stories about motels and hotels. I have been awakened a half dozen times by the hotel fire alarm, but only once was there a real fire. Fortunately, it was in the parking garage and did not destroy my room—but I spent the night sitting on a curb outside in the cold. Several times I have been given keys to rooms that were already occupied by one or more persons, and yes, I walked in on these people! I have slept on every kind of bed including hammocks, extremely hard Asian beds, and even a piece of yellowed foam with no covering.

There are stories of obnoxious, noisy, partying, and just crazy people staying beside me or above me, but I will only share my most recent sleep deprived night. During a visit to southern California recently, I was staying in a Double Tree Hotel in Pomona. After a busy day of meetings, I needed to unwind, so I prepared for bed and started reading a book, “Washington’s Spies.” Just on the brink of falling asleep, I sat up quickly in the bed as it sounded like someone running across my room.

Actually, the noise was coming from the room above me. It sounded like an elephant tromping across the room. I was on the first floor, and I knew my room carpet was laid upon concrete, but the second floor had to be wooden because I could hear every step of someone walking heavily back-and-forth the length of the room. Suddenly, he or she or it started pouncing across the bed as it walked around the room.

I sat down hard on my bed and jumped up and down trying to duplicate the noise from the creaky bed I heard above me--but to no avail. I don’t know how any creature could make that much noise walking. I wondered why it was pacing so much. The pace was not a regular one. It was as if it deliberately chose a different path around the room every 30 seconds. I could not go to sleep.

I turned on the television thinking that would drown out the noise and make me sleepy. Didn’t work. I tried reading. Didn’t work. I tried holding a pillow over my head but that’s not a good situation in which to go to sleep. I had to wake up at 6 AM, and it was already past midnight.

My human nature wanted me to bang on the ceiling, but I was afraid that some psycho would come down and pound on my door. I thought about going to the front desk and complaining, but I remembered that there was a young lady at the desk, and I did not want her to confront the psycho.

 Somehow, I drifted to sleep. During the very short night, I had to go to the bathroom and guess what? The elephant was still in the room, and it was still pacing the floor and the creaky bed.

When I awoke in the morning, IT was still pacing the floor, and I wondered to myself, “Doesn’t this thing above me ever sleep?” My first inclination was to pick up my shoe and stand in the desk chair and bang on the ceiling.

That’s the modus operandi for us as human beings, isn’t it? When someone does something bad to us, we want to do something bad to them. Like someone cutting you off in traffic makes you want to catch up with them and cut them off. Or you learn that someone in your extended family made a snide comment about one of your immediate family, and your reaction is to make a smart remark about someone in their immediate family.

While grabbing my shoe, the Lord brought this to my mind from I Peter: “Put aside all malice and deceit and hypocrisy and envy and slander.” I didn’t bang on the ceiling – although I wanted to really bad!