Airplane shmairplane! It turns out our baby daughter was great on her first flight — and while I'm on the topic, she was also great on her first train trip and her first airport shuttle as well. No one in our vicinity was disturbed by her presence. She's a natural traveler.
What I didn't expect to have happen on this trip was to be disturbed by the noise coming from other people. The hotel we stayed in on Saturday night had booked not one, but TWO weddings. So around midnight we were wide awake listening to sounds of doors opening and closing, girls laughing very loudly about I don't know what, and guys running up and down the hallway shouting "Dude! Dude!" I imagine something like this was happening next door.
I wanted to step into the hall and yell, "Dude! You're being totally loud and obnoxious and inconsiderate." I guess this all was payback for when I was a jerk cavorting around during all hours of the night when I was on spring break in college. But then again that hotel had been entirely rented out to spring breakers.
In any case, I was left with a dilemma — do I pound on the doors, do I shout an anonymous "SHUT UP!" or do I call hotel management and let them be the enforcers? A perfect dilemma for me to ponder. So, what did I do, you might ask? I am somewhat ashamed to say, none of the above. I covered my ears and waited it for to end (I could have used a famly pack of these). Mercifully the cavorting ending about 20 minutes later.
This reminds me of an incident that happened to me when I lived in a house with a bunch of guys in Los Angeles. The local bar let out around 2:00 a.m. and my roommates spontaneously decided to invite half the bar back to our place for a late-night party. The problem was that our house was in a densely packed residential neighborhood. We cavorted around for about 45 minutes before the police came and broke things up. Later that week, I ran into one of my neighbors who admitted that her husband had called the cops. She was an elderly woman, and she was in fact apologizing because she had tried to get him not to call because she felt that "young kids should be allowed to have fun." But that didn't make me feel any better about keeping her up.
That's the dilemma. Do you risk being the party pooper by breaking up the fun for a little peace and quiet? Or are you a coward if you do nothing? And if you do say something, should it be by knocking on their door, anonymously shouting into the hall, or calling the front desk? I'm not sure what the right thing to do is, but since I was only mildly put out, I am okay with my decision to let it pass. The next day, I saw a case of empty Budweiser bottles sitting outside their door. It's likely that they had bigger headaches that morning than I did.
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