Saturday, November 21, 2009

You can take the boy out of The Bronx...

...but you can't take The Bronx out of the boy. Did you all know that Mike is originally from The Bronx? Well, it's true. He may have only lived there a year before his family moved to Beacon, but clearly those formative months in the Boogie Down left their mark. So with his origins in mind, let me tell you a little story about my husband. (P.S. Please keep in mind that this is NOT a knock against The Bronx! Being from Queens myself, I got nuttin' but love for the boroughs!)

On Monday, when we arrived on the Big Island from Maui, we were about 6 days into our 10 day vacation and were both running pretty low on clean clothes. I was down to my last pair of socks and Mike was totally out of boxers and golf shirts. We had thought about getting some of our essential items cleaned while we were on Maui, but the rates at our last hotel were absurd: $3 per pair of socks, $12 per shirt, and so on. Thus, you can imagine our delight when Mike found a single-use packet of Woolite in the amenities basket here at the Four Seasons! We had been planning on doing some hand wash once we got here anyway, so discovering laundry detergent in our room was just a huge plus. Not one to waste time, Mike went to work immediately on filling the tub and cleaning his clothes. This struck me as mildly amusing as I had never seen anyone do hand wash in a tub before. But hey, I guess the tub makes sense if you have a lot to clean. Or if your clothes take up a lot of space. Typically my hand wash consists of unmentionables that fit neatly in the sink, so it never occurred to me to fill up the bath. But I'm digressing. To continue painting the picture: Mike is cleaning his shirts and shorts in the tub and I am digging through my suitcase to find my dirty socks and other workout paraphernalia (might as well make full use of the tub now, right?). Before I can even pull the last dirty item from my bag, Mike is all done and carrying his wet stuff past me into the room. I assume that he needs to get into the closet so he can hang up his stuff, so I move out of the way and head right into the bathroom. Mike was kind enough to drain the tub once he was done, so I turn the water on and start to refill it. Then I grab the Woolite from the counter only to discover that he used the whole thing!

-- We now interrupt this story to give you some critical background information that will really help put the climax of the drama in perspective. A friend of mine happens to know the CEO of the Four Seasons on the Big Island, where this story takes place. My friend put a call in to his friend, who then made sure that we were given not just the usual 4S treatment, but some extra special 4S treatment. When we checked into our room, we not only found the champagne and massage gift certificate that I mentioned in my last post, but also a personal note from the CEO inviting us to dinner on the house as well as a day of complimentary ocean activities like snorkeling or canoeing or whatever else appealed to us. I also think, although this was never stated, that this friend had a hand in seeing that our cabana was on the 18th hole of the golf course. Pretty nice, right? Especially since the CEO doesn't know us personally. Okay, so as I return you to your regularly scheduled blog post please keep in mind that we were being treated as special guests at the hotel and would eventually like to meet the CEO and make a good impression. --

Slightly irritated now that my husband used all the soap, I turn around to ask Mike if by any chance he had found two packages of Woolite. And what do I see when I turn around? There, outside the double doors to the patio, looking out on the golf course where a few fine linksmen are concluding their game, is my Michael, hanging up his laundry over the side of our balcony. Ahhhhhhh! I mean, we might as well have packed some engine parts to strew all over the front lawn. If ever there were any unspoken rules of how one should comport oneself at a fine hotel, NOT stringing clothes up out the window has to be one of them! Add to that the fact that the clothes in question were in one of the most conspicuous spots on the entire property -- directly in view of the golfers as they drove up to the 18th hole -- and that fact that we were given special treatment by the CEO, the laundry faux pas could not have been more mortifying. Can you imagine if the golfers had actually complained or mentioned to the pro back at the shop that there was some riffraff hanging clothes up on the course?? Ohmigod. These are all the thoughts racing through my head. I didn't say anything, but I guess Mike could tell by the look on my face that something was wrong.

"Pretty Bronx, huh?" he laughs.

"Ha!" Nervous laughter from me. "Yeah, um, actually, maybe we could just hang those up in the bathroom? Or the closet?"

"They'll dry better out here though."

"True... but they look a lot less embarrassing in here!"

We came to a mutual agreement that maybe there was a better place for the clothes. A compromise, if you will. I hung some of his shorts off the back of the chairs on the balcony, out of sight of passersby. And the rest we hung up in the closet.

But the story doesn't end there! In the most perfect, ironic, comical ending ever, we left our room shortly after the hand wash incident to go tour the resort property. Remember, we had only just checked in the hour before. And what do we find not 100 yards from our cabana? A laundry room, complete with washer AND dryer (and soap!), for guests-use only.

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