Holiday Inn Heckler

Something happened over the weekend that I just have to share with you. I've been lazy busy so couldn't blog about it until now, but figured I'd better do it before my tired old brain forgets all about it.

I had planned a surprise overnight stay for the Hubs and me at a Holiday Inn about an hour away; it's called the Holiday Inn French Quarter, not because it's in New Orleans (far from it, it's near Toledo, OH), but because it has a French Quarter theme and decor inside. It's a really nice place and affordable for cheapskates frugal wives like myself. And let's face it: that's as close to the actual French Quarter as I'm ever gonna get.

Holiday Inn French Quarter

Anyhoots, our reservation was for Saturday night. The Hubs had an all day class in Toledo anyway, so I figured I'd surprise him and tell him to meet me at the French Quarter for a little Valentines getaway. Of course I needed to get to the hotel early and get unpacked and settled in. I figured the Hubs would be hungry after a full day of plumbing-learning (his class was for his license renewal) and wanted to be ready to take him to dinner when he got in.

I got there at 4:30pm and naturally I couldn't remember what time his class would be over. It was either 5pm or 6pm, so that meant I was either gonna have a very short wait for him or a kind of long one. So to be sure I had a way to keep myself busy, I brought along my laptop. I'll begrudgingly admit, I'm practically joined at the hip to both of my computers since much of my life is spent online or computing in some form or another. [There are worse things I could be doing!] I was looking forward to a break from them actually, but was glad to have the laptop to surf the web a bit instead of having to watch TV.

But no sooner than I sat down to start surfing I started to hear a voice...a man's voice...a loud man's voice...coming from the room next door. Seriously. The dude was L-O-U-D, and that was WTF moment number one for that evening. The guy was talking on the phone about various things, and my first thought was, damn, I hope that guy is not gonna be that loud all night long. It wasn't exactly going to be conducive to the romantic ambiance I was trying to create for the night. And it was annoying!

As his voice grew increasingly louder, I could hear, word-for-freaking-word, what he was going all megavolume-rantic about. He had a brr up his butt about the Super Bowl. More specifically, about Christina Aguilera singing the National Anthem at the Super Bowl...and more specifically still, about how she flubbed the lyrics of the National Anthem at the Super Bowl.  He made several obnoxious statements about this, basically heckling Ms. Aguilera after the fact.

  1. He said that Christina Aguilera was a hack.

  2. He said that she didn't deserve ANY of her grammy awards because she has no talent.

  3. He said that it's the "stupid American public's" fault that she has any grammys in the first place, so basically it's our fault she F'd up the National Anthem Lyrics. And yes folks, he was also an American, the irony of which was in no way lost on me at that moment.

He was going on and on and on about this. Apparently, it was a serious problem for him. Probably not as serious as the ear damage he was inflicting on the person on the receiving end of the phone call, and on those of us unfortunate enough to be stuck in a hotel room right next to him with very thin walls, but still, a problem. I was on Facebook at that time and all I could think was "WTF, Dude?! Shut up already, you loud-mouthed, judgmental, holier-than-though-heckling-A-hole!" And geez, give the girl a break. At least she wasn't lip syncing. Or grabbing her crotch. Or having a wardrobe malfunction. She flubbed some words.  It happens. Ever make a mistake, you big fat jerk?!

So yeah, that was WTF moment number two for the night. As I was griping on Facebook about this idiot, he finally got off the phone. I choose to believe that the person to whom he was speaking finally wised up and told him to find something a little more important to bitch about and then hung up on him. One can only hope. But then all was quiet...for a moment or two anyway. Until...


And then the guy next door yelling, "THAT'S IT, SLAM IT!"

And that was WTF moment number three for the evening.

But no one had slammed a door, not intentionally anyway. There were doors at each end of the hallway on our floor, the Concierge Floor. Those doors were very heavy and they pulled closed automatically when someone walked through them. And of course, they didn't exactly close quietly. Annoying? Yes. But as obnoxious as the guy next door yelling, "SLAM IT?" Um, no.

This actually happened 2 more times...each time that idiot thinking someone was slamming the door to their room, and each time he's over in his room yelling, "SLAM IT!" A to the H to the OLE! And just as I was about to  lose my passive-aggressive cool and go over there and give him a piece of my mind which never would have happened, the Hubs arrived. Thank God.

I went down to meet the Hubs, since I had both of our room "keys." And by the time we got back, as I was talking his ear off the whole time about the jerk wad heckler next door, all was quiet on the hotel room front. Until the Hubs used the bathroom, of course, at which point that hallway door slammed once again and he made sure we were aware of it. I was kind of laughing when the Hubs came out and told him about it. I decided it was better just to laugh it off than to let it ruin our weekend. After all, if it got really bad, we could always ask for another room. And I told the Hubs I had an alternate solution, if push came to shove. I simply suggested that we make love, AS LOUDLY AS POSSIBLE, as a means of protest and justified noise retaliation.

His reply? "Happy Valentines Day to Me!"