Long long time ago my sister and I were part of an orchestra that was selected to perform at a very special music festival. There must have been around a hundred or so of us in this orchestra.
I was just thirteen when I auditioned. My sister was fifteen. That was in May. The big trip was in December.
We had a really magnificent group of instructors to go with us on the trip. They had things planned out like you cannot believe. We had different levels of dress for the events we would attend. We had the opportunity to hear a symphony orchestra (up close and personal--we were in the front row, close enough to hear one of the cellists grunting while playing). We got to go to an amazing Greek restaurant for a delightful meal (baklava became my absolute favorite treat of all time). We got to go shopping downtown in the big city right before Christmas. It was electric.
But probably the most incredible part was how they managed to police us--over one hundred students spread out across a couple of different levels of a large hotel. They did an amazing job but of course they couldn't do it all alone. No, even with a cadre of teachers and parents as chaperones, sometimes kids just have to look out for each other, right?
My sister and I were supposed to share a room with two girls from the viola section, but then one of them got sick and wasn't able to make the trip. Somehow we ended up getting one of the best rooms. We had 1.5 or 2 bathrooms. My sister and I each had our own bed on one side of the room and Greta took up the opposite side of the room.
Besides having a biiiiiig room with more than one potty, we were also able to look out our windows and across the way to see into some of the boy's rooms.
And that is how we came to be part of "hotel management." There was a group of boys across the way from us and they were misbehavin' just a bit. They had all the lights out in the room and the windows open but there was this little orange glow bobbing around the room.
No reason for an orange glow unless of course someone was, oh, smoking or something.
So my sister and I did what any good kid would do. Not rat them out but make sure they knew that their little activities could be seen.
(Seriously, ya wanna smoke some cigs on a school trip, hide in the hotel bathroom. For Pete's sake, this hotel was in a U shape. We were on one side of the U and they were on the other side of the U, 1 floor down.)
We called their room. And claimed to be from "hotel management." We told them that we were able to monitor the room and knew that they had the window open in the dead of winter and that they needed to close it to properly balance the heating system again.
They hung up on us.
We called again.
(Mind you this was quite a long time ago--rotary phones and no caller id)
We gave the same spiel all over again. They questioned us because they didn't believe we were hotel management. We insisted that from our "office window" we could see that they had their window opened and it needed to be closed.
Eventually they stopped with the cigarettes by the opened window.
Silly boys.
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