You don’t care. I get it. Pretend to care. Take an acting class, and learn to emote. It ought to be part of your training, so that when you put on the uniform and look in the mirror, your smile tells your customers that you’re a human being. Instead, your sitting there as cold as ice like some brain-dead robot. Your thumb runs over the glass of your smart phone, subconsciously activating some app that will you take you away from it all, killing pigs or crushing candy. Anything better than this asshole, who’s demanding that the car he reserved four freaking months ago be sitting in the lot with a shiny set of keys and a radio. So she offered us an upgrade, from an SUV to a two-door convertible BMW that the kids are going to love. Wind in our hair and all of that. If only we could fit three kids inside, along with our luggage. She tried to make me happy, but oh well. “Sorry,” she says, but doesn’t really mean it. “You can phone the number in the morning and try to get a refund.” That’s right, In the morning. But right now, it’s late, and I got a family stuck at the airport, and there is no tomorrow. There is no tomorrow. Desperately, we go from one rental car company to the other, searching for scraps. Most of the cars are gone. The Enterprise lady sees the look of desperation in my eyes, and offers me a minivan for roughly the cost to buy one. I give it some thought. She doesn’t care either. No one cares anymore, and I wonder why I still give a shit. I want not to care like the others. I want prozac or whatever these assholes are taking, something to bring the dead into my eyes, a shrug into my shoulders, and perhaps a smirk of inner joy, what the Germans call schadenfruede. I want to join the ranks, because it seems so easy over there. Not caring. Not my problem. Talk to the hand.
Andrea comes up and says there’s this guy with this car, and it’s going for a lot less than Enterprise. We go and sign the paperwork, and we’re on our way.
But now, the guy at the front desk of the hotel doesn’t have the rooms we reserved.
This is vacation. Our time to get away from the hassles and the headaches. To recharge our batteries.
We have two separate rooms on two different floors, and there are no other options. So we split up, girls on the twentieth floors, and boys on the sixteenth. We meet for breakfast, eggs and renewed optimism. At least we’re not working. The family is together. The sun is shining, and we’re off for a new adventure.
Now smile like you give a shit, or at least try and fake it!  🙂