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Mis-adventures in Sparkle City
August 21st, 2008 by witherow
This past weekend, Christy, Rachel and I headed to Sparkle City—a.k.a. Spartanburg—to attend a National Federation of the Blind (NFB) convention. The plan was that all three of us would go to the conference all day Saturday, then I would drive them to a hotel and go home since I was singing in church on Sunday and couldn’t miss. On Sunday morning, Rachel and Christy would walk from the hotel to the convention, finish up, and I would pick them up that afternoon. In reality, the weekend didn’t quite go as planned … but it was definitely an adventure to remember.
We started bright and early on Saturday morning. First stop: Sonic, where Christy and Rachel got breakfast and I got a latte. (The only reason I didn’t get breakfast is because I had just eaten some of my favorite breakfast food of all time: pie.)
We arrived at the conference, sat through it for a few hours, and then left for good. The people there were all very kind, but let’s just say we have major philosophical differences with the NFB and didn’t really belong there (if you are interested in what our objections were, see the tirade below).
So we headed to the hotel Rachel and Christy had booked, which was easily within walking distance of the convention. It was a beautiful building, too, with marble columns, fountains outside, sculptures … maybe a little too beautiful for 80 bucks a night. This was Question Mark In Our Heads number 1. But the lettering on the building clearly said “Extended Stay Hotels.” It was etched into the marble, but it said it nonetheless.
QMIOH no. 2 was the fact that the main doors were locked.
“This is strange,” thought Emily. “Why would they lock a hotel at 3 in the afternoon?” But she could see a sign through the glass doors that said “Visitors must sign in at the front desk,” so obviously they expected us!
QMIOH no. 3 was the fact that we walked all around the building only to find that all of the doors were locked—except one. We walked into the big, echo-y marble lobby and found said front desk, looking very much like someone there had just stepped away for a moment.
“Hello?” we called. No answer but our own echoes.
“Is anybody here?”
Still no answer.
“Is this a hotel?”
Nada.
“Did we miss the Rapture?”
Finally I found a small directory with all of the Extended Stay locations in the U.S. Strangely, the location we were at was not listed. I found the nearest one in Spartanburg and called the number.
A nice man answered the phone. I explained the situation and told him we were at 100 Dunbar Street.
He paused. “You are? That’s the corporate headquarters. I didn’t know they were open on weekends.”
“Oh, uh … well, we got in, so you might want to check that out. Anyway, do you mind telling us how to get to the right place?”
The man kindly directed us to the actual hotel, which would have been impossible to walk to. So it was a good thing Rachel and Christy weren’t going back to the conference!
Then Rachel and Christy checked in, like for real, since they decided even if the conference was a dud, they could have fun goofing off and staying up all night in a strange place.
Since the rest of the evening lay before us, we called up my cool sister Heidi, who lives in Spartanburg, and met up at the local mall. We mostly chatted, walked off some of our lingering emotions from the conference, and threatened to sue one another for “impermissible discrimination.”
Then after conference-calling people in California and Arizona over Skype messenger (isn’t technology great?), I returned to Greenville and Rachel and Christy … did whatever it was they do wee hours of the night—something that probably involved junk food and instant messaging each other from across the room.
We reunited on Sunday for a lunch at Steak and Shake. So the weekend wasn’t a complete loss. We had a good time and now have a whole slew of new inside jokes. Impermissible discrimination!
****
Warning: what follows is a rare PumpkinAnkles tirade! Read on only if you dare.
Here is my take on the NFB philosophy: The sighted world is out to get blind people and doesn’t want them to have any rights. They show their “impermissible discrimination” when they do bigoted things like tell them where to sit on airplanes. If you’re blind and someone challenges your rights like this, implying that you are not fully independent, then run to the NFB and they will take care of you. Don’t worry, they won’t try to work out a solution with the company; they’ll just bring a nasty lawsuit against them. Obviously when people have had their pants sued off, they will develop love and respect for those who now have their money. Bleh. I say the NFB takes the cash they make in America defending the questionable Right to Sit Anywhere I Want To On An Airplane and send it to places in Asia and Africa where the blind aren’t allowed to get jobs or go to school. And if you think I sound disgusted with this, you should have heard Rachel and Christy!)
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on August 22nd, 2008 at 9:35 am
That was a great tirade. I’m glad that I had the opportunity to call you up over the great skype and hear it just after the fact. hillarious. Oh, please don’t sue me because I’m sure I’ve tried to help Rachel at some point, and I don’t have anything she could take! lol