Perdido Rules

I want pitch a fit.

Like a rock star, I want to smash the furnature in my room, punch holes in the wall and write graffitti on the bathroom mirror.

I want to.

But I won't.

Instead I just slammed down the receiver of the phone, not even swearing at the front desk clerk, and sulked. This is what you do when you are over fifty, semi-respectable and too tired to get much of a head up. I had called downstairs to be told that the hotel has a business center with computer internet access but it's closed on weekends and only open from 8 to 6, Monday to Friday. It's Sunday, I want to check email, write my blog, and check out local movies. But, no, the center is closed.

Cause that's the rule.

No one I spoke to understood the 'why' of the rule, they only understood the 'that' of the rule. And I am powerless in front of their need to assert the right of rule. And it angers me.

Deeply angers me.

But this is what it is to be at the whim of others, anonymous rule setters who will never meet me, never understand my needs and never desire my confidences.

In two weeks I go back to my office at Vita. I'm going to take the page out of the information binder that outlines the rules of this hotel and have it copied. It will be my souvenier of anger and my keepsake of powerlessness.

I want to be reminded of what that feels like.

Because I don't like it done to me.

So, pray, let me not do it to others.