Making Flippy Floppy

A few years ago, when I worked the night shift at the front desk at the Days Inn, I had a gentleman come in from the snow looking for a room at 1:30 or so one morning. I was in the dining room doing my usual routine of folding endless bleachy white hand cloths and towels and watching "Design on a Dime" episodes on HGTV. I didn't hear a peep - no car pulling up or even the familiar swoosh of the outer door. He just seemed to pop up suddenly in the lobby when I was on my way back through to the dryer with the laundry cart. There was something eerily familiar about the man. I was too tired and mentally focused on getting all those damn towels done to give it too much thought. As I was checking him in, he told me he'd driven all the way from Vegas that day on his way to a gig at a convention in Tacoma. I looked at the name on the credit card hoping for a clue, but the it was nothing special. Before I could ask for more details, he changed the subject. I handed him his keycard and wished him a good night and as he turned to retire to his room, he threw me a wink and a smile that was totally unmistakable. The gesture was exactly like that of everyone's favorite weed puffing, biofuel shilling, country singing legend Willie Nelson. The resemblance was uncanny, even down to the long reddish-gray hair pulled into neat braids under a red bandanna. "No way...couldn't be...nope..." I was tripping hard as I pulled a fresh, hot batch of crisp white towels from the huge dryer. "Willie" silently popped up and startled me again about five hours later as I was setting out the continental breakfast. "Ah, my first victim, uh, I mean...customer of the day" I joked, and left him alone in peace to eat generic Raisin Bran with "hole milk"* and stale mini-muffins terrorized by Promise low-fat spread. I went in the back in the laundry room for a few minutes to stack dozens of neatly folded towels on giant shelves where they could relax for a mere hour or two before the maids showed up and piled them on their little carts, thus beginning the whole endless cycle of hotel towels once again. I returned to the dining room and the gentleman was gone as quietly as he came. Up at the counter of the front desk, I found his keycard along with this very enlightening business card:

Labels: Incidental Findings