For info on the Shy Man's Guide to Success with Women, please visit www.shyperson.com. For Terry Heggy's other writing, please see www.terryheggy.com.
Motel Shenanigans – Part 2 ~1975
When you’re a teenager, you don’t really worry too much about how much sleep you get. You can stay up late at night without worrying about next-day consequences. Hey, if you fall asleep in the middle of the day, what’re ya gonna miss? Part of an Algebra class? Who cares? Government studies? Ha! I laugh at your society’s pitiful attempts to educate me. BWAH Haa ha ha zzzzzzzzz.
But while normal students can party all night (or more likely in MY peer group, watch TV, or even [choke] study), teenage swimmers at an out-of-town meet are abnormally concerned with getting enough rest. For a competitive athlete, it’s important to be able to wake up early enough to perform all the necessary rituals before the designated warm-up time. Back then, in pre-Atkins days, our preparation included having a giant carbo-loading breakfast (typically pancakes with lots of syrup), followed by some warm-up stretching, touch-up leg shaving (for championship meets only), and finally, the all-important visit to the locker room toilet to dump as much of remnants of the pancake breakfast as possible. (Some guys put more energy into purging their bowels than they did in their races, but let’s not go there, OK?)
Anyway, at the end of the day when we finished up with bed-bouncing competitions, harassing other motel guests, and sneaking into potentially revealing drive-in vampire movies, we actually did look forward to getting some restful sleep. I don’t know whether various political correctness movements have changed this or not, but when I was a teen, we had to share a motel bed with one of the other boys. Some guys talked in their sleep, some kicked, or stole covers, and some took great pride in the audio volume and olfactory stench they could generate with their incredible flatulence. So... there were enough challenges to getting a good night’s sleep without a bunch of drunken partiers in the room down the hall.
Yep, that’s right…one of our meets coincided with some sort of lodge convention. I’m not sure exactly who these guys were, but they wore those funny purple Moroccan upside-down-bucket hats with tassels. They drank heavily and laughed heartily. Even from within our room, we could hear their portable stereo playing “Music to Strip By”, while some guy shouted lame farmer’s daughter jokes over the music. And since his compatriots were laughing at each joke, one had to assume that the general level of inebriation in the room was approaching critical.
We couldn’t sleep, and with some of our teammates’ penchant for making prank phone calls to the front desk, we didn’t expect to be taken seriously if we went through official channels. Nonetheless, action was required.
I’m sorry to say that my memory is a little fuzzy about those who participated in “Operation Silence the Drunks”, but I think the group included Nyberg, Jackson, and my brother, the Ant. We quietly left our rooms and performed reconnaissance.
The partiers were in the last guest room at the end of the hallway. Beyond that was only the motel storage and laundry room. It was a long way back to the next corridor, so once we got down to the target room, we’d be highly exposed for the entire time it took to run back to the hallway intersection. We were leaning toward smearing something on the doorknob – hopefully some leftover glop from someone’s room-service tray. Or maybe trying to rig the door with some sort of booby trap. Closer investigation was needed.
But before we stood directly in front of their room for any period of time, we thought it would be a good idea to increase our escape options. If the storage room was unlocked, we could possibly hide in there if anything went wrong.
Sure enough, the storage room door opened with only a little persuasion from a credit-card against the bolt. And once that door was opened, our plans became complete in an instant.
The storage room was full of old mattresses. Perfect. Thank you, God.
Now all we needed was a little bit of time. No one had passed through the party room door for some time now, and it sounded as if the party was still in crescendo mode. We huddled in the storage room, coordinated assignments, and even went through a bit of a dry run to practice our teamwork. Then it was time to move.
Two athletes were assigned to each mattress. Our loads were bulky and fairly heavy, but we were charged with adrenaline, and highly motivated. It took only 8 seconds to get the first mattress in place, completely covering the door to the party room. Assault Team Two had the next mattress propped up against the first a few seconds later. Then, a moment of panic…the door opened!
“Hey!” someone yelled from behind the mattress. “Whuzgononhere?” The sound was actually muffled pretty well by the dual mattresses, but the message was clear – we were in deep trouble if these guys got out before we could escape. Nyberg and I leaned against the mattress with all our strength, which for the moment was enough to overcome the occupants’ half-hearted efforts to push their way out. The other guys grabbed the next mattress, and then the next.
Before the partiers realized the extent of their predicament, we had stuffed enough mattresses in the hallway to fill all the space between the door and the opposite wall. It was a lot of work to wedge the last one in there, especially since we were giggling hysterically as we listened to the barrage of creative cursing coming from behind our barrier. But by the time we kicked the last mattress into place, it was clear that those fez-wearing inebriates were not going to be leaving that room without assistance from the outside.
Because the barrier was so snug, we felt secure in taking the time to taunt them for a bit. “You’re gonna ROT in there, you scumbags!” we yelled. And of course, being teenagers, we also had to say fiendishly clever things such as “You suck,” and “We’re smarter than you. Buttheads!”
Suddenly, though, the Ant stopped yelling and looked thoughtful. “What?” I asked him. “Um, I was just thinking... what if they’ve called the desk?”
The giggling stopped abruptly, and the running began. We tore down the hall, fumbling with room keys in the fading hope that we’d be able to duck into our room before the authorities arrived. Oh NO! We heard the elevator bell ding.
Tumbling through and slamming the room door behind us, we still weren’t sure whether we’d escaped unseen. The four of us huddled together with our ears against the door, trying very hard to breathe quietly while our hearts pounded away. “I heard a door slam,” a voice said. “Yeah, but which one?”
Whew! They’d probably eventually figure out what had happened, but they couldn’t prove anything. We began to relax.
Of course, we then had to stay up for quite a while to talk about what studly adventurers we were – thwarting the evil adults, and all that. We probably ended up getting less sleep than we would have if we’d have just put up with the party. But it was worth it.
The next day, the coach and the chaperones loudly expressed their dissatisfaction with the hoodlums who had so cruelly harassed those innocent conventioneers. There were a few times where a particularly steely adult gaze made me think that they somehow knew which of us were responsible…but no consequences were ever sanctioned.
But even with our eyelids feeling a little droopy that morning, and our prospects of swimming fast not looking too positive, well, those pancakes still tasted pretty good.
Have fun, my friends, but keep the noise down, OK?
Monday, February 02, 2004
For info on the Shy Man's Guide to Success with Women, please visit www.shyperson.com. For Terry Heggy's other writing, please see www.terryheggy.com.
Motel Shenanigans – Part 1 ~1975
Road trips with the swim team were golden opportunities for kids in their late teens to experiment with their burgeoning sexuality, and to solidify their relationships with their teenage sweethearts. Oh, there were chaperones, all right, but there weren’t enough of them to keep an eye on us all the time, and besides, they were enjoying being away from home, as well.
I mean, they could have alcohol, you know? Now, I’m not saying that they did, but the theory does provide an explanation for why they didn’t spend much time watching over the rambunctious youth in their charge.
In any case, there were very few obstacles to prevent the kids from getting together in the motel rooms and engaging in all sorts of hanky panky.
Unfortunately, the one obstacle that did exist was a HUGE one – we were socially retarded nerds who were years away from getting a clue…about much of anything. The boys I hung around with presented no threat whatsoever to the virtue of the young ladies on the team.
(Sigh.)
And yet, we had the unbridled energy and enthusiasm of the youthful athletes that we were, so something had to give.
(Explanatory note: The era I’m describing pre-dated the omnipresence of Cable TV, and the invention of video games. Today’s youth would be likely to expend their extra energy in marathon sessions of GameBoy competition, or perhaps in fighting over the TV remote in bloody battles for channel-selector supremacy. But we had none of those options. Without cable, the only thing to do within the room during certain times of the evening would be to watch the News – and since that might accidentally be educational, we shunned it the way we would shun Oklahomans. When the News came on, we went out.)
One night, we were staying in a motel that was next to a Drive-In theatre. A bunch of us decided that it would be fun to sneak into the Drive-In and watch the movie. As I recall, the picture was “Blood of the Zombie” or “Zombie Bloodbath” or some damn thing – so it seemed likely that at some point during the evening there might be the opportunity to view one or more naked female breasts on the silver screen. (Hey, I said we were lacking social skills, not hormones.)
We gathered most of the regular gang, but knew that such an adventure required the participation of Roger Neugent. When Neugent joined an operation, well, interesting things just happened. I was selected to go get Roger.
It was around 9pm, and all the swimmers were supposed to be nestled in their rooms. The chaperones may have already been tucked in themselves…or they may have been down the street at the local bar – who knows? – All I know is that at that moment, they were not in the motel hallways dropping the iron fist of discipline on wayward, curfew-busting swimmers like myself.
I found Neugent’s room and banged on the door. I heard a muffled “Who is it?” from within. Hey, it’s Neugent, I thought; he’s used to being hassled by the Man – let’s have a little fun here. I banged again. Then, doing my best to sound mature and burly, I grunted “Hotel Security! Open up!”
“Just a minute.” I was already chuckling, anticipating Neugent’s grin when he saw it was only me and realizing that he hadn’t been busted for…well, whatever he happened to be feeling guilty about.
It took longer than I thought it should, but finally the door opened. There stood some old guy (probably 30) that I had never seen before. He was in his underwear, and behind him I could see a woman in the bed, looking anxiously toward the door while hugging the bedcovers up under her chin. Even with my nerdy naïveté, I instantly realized that I had interrupted a romantic encounter between two people I did not know. This was not Neugent’s room.
My eyes went wide and my heart started pounding. “Uh, sorry, wrong room,” I stammered, then turned and ran down the hall. I expected to be grabbed from behind and rightly pummeled for my unwarranted interruption of the couple’s private activity. And if I somehow managed to escape that, I expected to encounter the real hotel security force, complete with handcuffs, billy clubs, and a complete lack of respect for my Miranda rights.
In retrospect, I’m guessing that the poor guy I disturbed simply turned to his wife, grumbled something about disrespectful punks and the sad state of the youth in this country, then returned to his previous activity. Since the motel hallways did not echo with the expected “Red Alert” horn, and I did not see squadrons of badge-wearing enforcement drones searching down every stairwell and inside every ice machine, I assume that the guy didn’t even call the front desk to complain.
Either that, or they were like most other small-town Kansas motels that were next to vampire-movie drive-ins – where “Security” consisted of the same pimple-faced teenager who had the job of restocking the soda machines and using an old broom to chase away the stray cats who wanted to sleep under the housekeeping carts.
To be honest with you, though, I don’t even remember if we got around to sneaking into the movie. I was so traumatized by the incident that I don’t remember anything except looking over my shoulder as we left the motel the next morning; expecting to see my prank victim coming after me with an ax or a loaded ice bucket or something. I showed my face as little as possible, furtively ducking behind other swimmers until we could load up and drive away from the place.
(Of course, it didn’t help that all my buddies with whom I’d shared the story were taking great delight in shouting “Here he comes!” every time I started to relax a little. Sigh.)
The good news is that I overcame that trauma reasonably quickly. By the time the next out-of-town swim meet rolled around, I was ready for further authority-flouting adventures, which will follow shortly.
Get a good night’s rest, my friends.
Motel Shenanigans – Part 1 ~1975
Road trips with the swim team were golden opportunities for kids in their late teens to experiment with their burgeoning sexuality, and to solidify their relationships with their teenage sweethearts. Oh, there were chaperones, all right, but there weren’t enough of them to keep an eye on us all the time, and besides, they were enjoying being away from home, as well.
I mean, they could have alcohol, you know? Now, I’m not saying that they did, but the theory does provide an explanation for why they didn’t spend much time watching over the rambunctious youth in their charge.
In any case, there were very few obstacles to prevent the kids from getting together in the motel rooms and engaging in all sorts of hanky panky.
Unfortunately, the one obstacle that did exist was a HUGE one – we were socially retarded nerds who were years away from getting a clue…about much of anything. The boys I hung around with presented no threat whatsoever to the virtue of the young ladies on the team.
(Sigh.)
And yet, we had the unbridled energy and enthusiasm of the youthful athletes that we were, so something had to give.
(Explanatory note: The era I’m describing pre-dated the omnipresence of Cable TV, and the invention of video games. Today’s youth would be likely to expend their extra energy in marathon sessions of GameBoy competition, or perhaps in fighting over the TV remote in bloody battles for channel-selector supremacy. But we had none of those options. Without cable, the only thing to do within the room during certain times of the evening would be to watch the News – and since that might accidentally be educational, we shunned it the way we would shun Oklahomans. When the News came on, we went out.)
One night, we were staying in a motel that was next to a Drive-In theatre. A bunch of us decided that it would be fun to sneak into the Drive-In and watch the movie. As I recall, the picture was “Blood of the Zombie” or “Zombie Bloodbath” or some damn thing – so it seemed likely that at some point during the evening there might be the opportunity to view one or more naked female breasts on the silver screen. (Hey, I said we were lacking social skills, not hormones.)
We gathered most of the regular gang, but knew that such an adventure required the participation of Roger Neugent. When Neugent joined an operation, well, interesting things just happened. I was selected to go get Roger.
It was around 9pm, and all the swimmers were supposed to be nestled in their rooms. The chaperones may have already been tucked in themselves…or they may have been down the street at the local bar – who knows? – All I know is that at that moment, they were not in the motel hallways dropping the iron fist of discipline on wayward, curfew-busting swimmers like myself.
I found Neugent’s room and banged on the door. I heard a muffled “Who is it?” from within. Hey, it’s Neugent, I thought; he’s used to being hassled by the Man – let’s have a little fun here. I banged again. Then, doing my best to sound mature and burly, I grunted “Hotel Security! Open up!”
“Just a minute.” I was already chuckling, anticipating Neugent’s grin when he saw it was only me and realizing that he hadn’t been busted for…well, whatever he happened to be feeling guilty about.
It took longer than I thought it should, but finally the door opened. There stood some old guy (probably 30) that I had never seen before. He was in his underwear, and behind him I could see a woman in the bed, looking anxiously toward the door while hugging the bedcovers up under her chin. Even with my nerdy naïveté, I instantly realized that I had interrupted a romantic encounter between two people I did not know. This was not Neugent’s room.
My eyes went wide and my heart started pounding. “Uh, sorry, wrong room,” I stammered, then turned and ran down the hall. I expected to be grabbed from behind and rightly pummeled for my unwarranted interruption of the couple’s private activity. And if I somehow managed to escape that, I expected to encounter the real hotel security force, complete with handcuffs, billy clubs, and a complete lack of respect for my Miranda rights.
In retrospect, I’m guessing that the poor guy I disturbed simply turned to his wife, grumbled something about disrespectful punks and the sad state of the youth in this country, then returned to his previous activity. Since the motel hallways did not echo with the expected “Red Alert” horn, and I did not see squadrons of badge-wearing enforcement drones searching down every stairwell and inside every ice machine, I assume that the guy didn’t even call the front desk to complain.
Either that, or they were like most other small-town Kansas motels that were next to vampire-movie drive-ins – where “Security” consisted of the same pimple-faced teenager who had the job of restocking the soda machines and using an old broom to chase away the stray cats who wanted to sleep under the housekeeping carts.
To be honest with you, though, I don’t even remember if we got around to sneaking into the movie. I was so traumatized by the incident that I don’t remember anything except looking over my shoulder as we left the motel the next morning; expecting to see my prank victim coming after me with an ax or a loaded ice bucket or something. I showed my face as little as possible, furtively ducking behind other swimmers until we could load up and drive away from the place.
(Of course, it didn’t help that all my buddies with whom I’d shared the story were taking great delight in shouting “Here he comes!” every time I started to relax a little. Sigh.)
The good news is that I overcame that trauma reasonably quickly. By the time the next out-of-town swim meet rolled around, I was ready for further authority-flouting adventures, which will follow shortly.
Get a good night’s rest, my friends.
