I'M STILL WAITING TO SEE MYSELF ON AMERICA'S FUNNIEST HOME VIDEOS

I watched the TV show American’s Funniest Home Videos (AFHV for short) on Sunday night, and found myself thinking, “Has it really been nearly 30 years since this show first debuted?”

As the old saying goes, time sure does fly.

I hate to say it, but one of the reasons why I still watch the show is because twice I have filled out consent forms for my video to appear on it...and I’m still waiting for at least one of them to air. I have the feeling, however, that after I’m long dead and buried, the show still will be airing weekly and with my luck, that’s when they’ll finally decide to run one of my videos.

Speaking of those videos, I was totally unaware both times that my husband was taping me. In fact, the first time, he secretly taped me and actually sent the tape to the show without even informing me about it first. He was forced to confess, however, when he received consent forms from the show and discovered I had to sign them or the video couldn’t air. 

That particular video featured me cheating on my diet. Back then, VCRs were popular, and we had two of them – one in the living room and one in the bedroom. The bedroom’s machine had a drawer-like compartment in the top of it that held a videotape and would pop up when the eject button was pressed.

I soon discovered that the drawer was the perfect size to hold Hershey bars, which were thin and flat. So I hid some in there and then, with just a push of the eject button, up would pop my secret stash.

My husband soon became suspicious when I, eating my dietetic meal of healthful salads and broiled chicken, began to disappear down to the bedroom every night immediately after dinner – something I’d never done before vowing to diet and shed some pounds. So he hid his video camera in the closet near the bed, left the closet door open just a crack and filmed me in the bedroom.

When he saw the results – me stuffing my face with chocolate bars that I’d popped up out of the VCR – he was certain he’d hit pay dirt, and immediately sent the tape off to the show.

I was upset when I first saw the tape (only after he received the consent forms from the show), but the thought of winning $10,000, which was a small fortune back then, made me forgive him for not allowing me to comb my hair, change into something nicer than my holey old sweats, or to look less like a Hoover vacuum-cleaner inhaling chocolate bars, before he'd taped the video.

Our initial excitement, however, and our plans for spending our future winnings began to fade as each month passed with no sign of the video airing on the show. 

Not one to be discouraged, my husband decided to tape me again – as part of the show’s “assignment America” segment, which asked for videos of practical jokes being played on people. Unfortunately, I once again was completely clueless as he devised his devious plot to prank me.

It all began when he woke me one Saturday morning and told me there was the most beautiful cardinal he had ever seen, perched right on my bird feeder in the yard.  Normally he wouldn’t DARE wake me on a Saturday morning, but he knew how badly I wanted to see a cardinal, so he decided to risk having a pillow flung at him.

When I rushed to the kitchen window, however, I saw nothing, not even the usually present squirrels, at the feeder.

“The cardinal’s gone!” I whined. “Why didn’t you wake me up sooner?”

My husband walked over to me and looked out the window. “It’s way up there in the big pine tree!” he said, pointing. “See it?”

I squinted at the pine tree. “I don’t see anything!”

From seemingly out of nowhere, a pair of binoculars suddenly appeared in my husband’s hand. “Use these,” he said. “You’ll be able to get a real close-up look at the bird and its beautiful red feathers.”

I stood at the window and futilely tried to focus the binoculars.  When I finally did, I scanned the pine tree, the oak tree, the maple tree, and even the neighbor’s flag pole.  Nothing.  No cardinal.

“Turn the knobs on the binoculars,” my husband said. “You’re not focusing right. That’s why you can’t see anything.”

I twisted and turned every knob on the binoculars, but still there was no sign of any cardinal.  Muttering, I plunked down the binoculars on the counter and turned to frown at my husband.  To my bewilderment, he was standing there holding a video camera.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Taping you,” he answered matter-of-factly, then started to chuckle.  It was an evil, sinister chuckle.

“What’s so funny?” I  nearly was afraid to ask.  I looked down at myself to make sure nothing was torn, exposed, or unbuttoned.

He laughed even harder, still filming. When he finally was able to catch his breath, he blurted out, “I smeared some black shoe polish on the binoculars!  You should see your eyes!  You look like a raccoon!”

I honestly thought he’d gone off the deep end.  I rushed into the bathroom to glance at myself in the mirror.  Sure enough, I had two ugly black circles around my eyes.  And the shoe polish he’d used must have been mixed with epoxy.  I nearly had to scrub my skin with sandpaper to get the stuff off.

“Why on earth would you do something like that?” I asked him as I smeared moisturizing cream around my eyes.

“So I can meet Daisy Fuentes,” he said.

“Daisy Fuentes?” I repeated. “That sexy model who now hosts America’s

DAISY FUENTES

Funniest Home Videos?” 

He nodded. “Yep!  I’m sending this tape to the show!  They asked for tapes of practical jokes, and this one of you is going to win!”

I stopped to glare at him. “You’d make your wife look like a fool on national TV just so you can meet Daisy Fuentes?”

“You’re forgetting we also could win $10,000,” he said. “Doesn’t that make you feel better?”

It did.  But considering that the previous tape never had aired, I wasn’t delusional enough to believe this current masterpiece of his ever would make it onto the show, either.  In fact, I was beginning to suspect the consent forms were just part of  the network’s ploy to keep all of its tape-submitters faithfully watching the next 1,000 episodes of AFHV.

Sure enough, we once again received a letter of congratulations from America’s Funniest Home Videos, along with release forms to sign.  The letter said, “The producers have decided that your video is a ‘keeper.’”

As I signed the forms, I had to chuckle at the part that said, “I swear that nothing on this video tape was staged.”  How many people, I wondered, had perjured themselves signing that part?  I can’t count the number of times the TV show had shown videos of some guy painting his house, when suddenly he fell off the ladder and spilled paint all over himself.  Why would anyone be standing around wasting good film taping something as boring as a guy painting a house unless that person knew in advance the guy was going to do something dumb?  It had to be staged.

Anyway, I sent back the neatly signed forms, even though I knew they probably would amount to nothing more than a waste of ink and a postage stamp.  My husband, however, optimist that he was, immediately started dieting, exercising and trying out new brands of men’s cologne, just so he could impress Daisy Fuentes when he met her.

Unfortunately, just a year later, Daisy was off the show and was replaced by Tom Bergeron. Suddenly my husband wasn’t quite as enthusiastic about winning. 

He didn't have to concern himself. That was over 20 years ago...and I’m still waiting to see either one of our videos appear on the air.

                           

                                                #   #   #

CLICK HERE ==>https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/384106

BEING A WEDDING PHOTOGRAPHER WASN'T EASY

The other day, I dug my 35mm camera and equipment out of the mothballs and spent two hours trying to remember how to attach the flash. Why? Because I hadn’t used the camera in over 10 years.

There was a time, about 35 years ago, when I really wanted to be a professional photographer...particularly a wedding photographer. I figured that working in an environment where everyone was laughing, dancing and partying just had to be the best job on earth.

As it turned out, I’d figured wrong.

I actually did give wedding photography my best shot. I bought state-of-the-art photographic equipment and then, whenever I attended a wedding, I shadowed the professional photographer and studied every move he or she made. Finally, when I felt I was ready, I started spreading the word that I was a wedding photographer, even though I’d never actually photographed a wedding. Amazingly, brides-to-be began calling me.

Within a few short weeks, I had booked three weddings. Instead of being pleased, I nearly had a nervous breakdown.

“How do I know I’ll be healthy on May 10th for the first wedding?” I asked my husband. “It’s still four months away! I could be in the operating room having an emergency appendectomy on that day…and then what would the poor bride do?”

“You’ve already had an appendectomy,” my husband said, not looking up from his magazine.

“And what if the lab spills acid on the film and ruins all of my photos?” I continued. “I’ll end up in People’s Court! A wedding’s not something you can do over again! It’s a one-time, all-or-nothing event!”

My husband looked up from his reading and rolled his eyes. “You’ll do just fine. Now just relax, will you?”

Easy for him to say, I thought. By the time May 10th rolled around, I was so nervous, I was buying Kaopectate by the gallon.

As it turned out, that first wedding went so smoothly, the photos turned out so well, and I had so much fun, I honestly began to believe I had found my true niche in life.

I also learned a couple valuable lessons during that wedding, the first being that wedding photographers never should wear dresses. When I squatted down in front of the altar so I could get a great shot of the ring bearer coming up the aisle, I flashed half the congregation (and I don’t mean with my camera).

And later, I was so intent on getting a good photo of the happy couple drinking a champagne toast in the back of their limousine, I didn’t care how I had to contort myself to get it. There I was, draped over the front seat with my butt sticking up right in the windshield, when I heard a group of people laughing outside. I can only imagine what kind of show I must have been giving them. From then on, I vowed to wear slacks.

THE LIMOUSINE PHOTO

The second thing I learned was that photographers have to be bossy or the photos never will get taken. More than once, I found myself shouting things like, “Bridesmaids! Go stand in front of the altar for a group shot…now!” And when they ignored me and kept right on chatting and giggling, I’d add, “If you don’t pose right now, I’m going to take a lot of embarrassing candid shots of you at the reception and have them blown up into enlargements!”

The next wedding went surprisingly well, too, and through word of mouth, I began to receive more and more calls for my services. I was beginning to feel pretty confident…until the third wedding, where everything that possibly could go wrong went wrong.

First of all, due to a memory lapse, I arrived at the bride’s house about an hour early. When I walked in, I caught the bride and her bridesmaids naked from the waist up and wrapping duct tape around their breasts to keep them in place beneath their strapless gowns. Somehow, I didn’t think that photos of the wedding party at that moment would have been appropriate for an 11x14 enlargement to hang over the mantel.

Then, in church, as the bride and groom lovingly exchanged their vows, I tiptoed to the back of the altar so I could get a good shot of the couple and their guests. I snapped the photo and started to discreetly back away…when I suddenly heard a loud crash behind me.

The priest abruptly stopped the ceremony and all eyes turned toward me. Smiling weakly, I looked down to discover I had bumped into a video camera that had been sitting on a tripod on the altar. When I saw pieces of it lying scattered across the floor, I thought for sure I was going to throw up.

After the ceremony, the owner of the then-disembodied camera approached me and introduced himself.

“You have the same last name as my cousin, the attorney!” I stupidly blurted out.

“An attorney?” the man said, frowning at the pile of scraps that had once been his video camera. “Perhaps you should give him a call.”

When I finally reached the wedding reception, I noticed that I’d forgotten to zip my camera bag. To my horror, the three films (a total of 108 photos) I’d just taken at the bride’s house and during and after the ceremony were missing. My heart began to pound like a jackhammer as beads of nervous perspiration popped out on my forehead. What, I wondered, was I supposed to do now? Ask everyone to go back to the church so I could re-shoot the ceremony? I headed to the phone to call my cousin, the attorney.

Just then, the limousine driver came walking into the reception hall. He looked around, spotted me, and rushed over. From his pocket he removed three rolls of film. “Are these yours?” he asked. “I just found them on the floor in the limo.”

I was so relieved, I grabbed him and hugged him. I didn’t let go until the guests began to stare and whisper.

When I finished taking my next roll of film, I rushed to rewind it because the bride and groom were about to cut the wedding cake. The problem with having a camera with nothing automatic on it, however, was that by the time I rewound the film by hand and put in another film, the bride and groom already were off on their honeymoon.

That wedding convinced me I needed to hire an assistant photographer, just to make certain no bride ever would end up photo-less on her big day. So I hired a young woman named Judy, bought a 35mm camera for her and taught her how to use it. Judy was a huge help at the next wedding, snapping shots I otherwise might have missed (like the drunken uncle doing a hula dance on a table) while I was busy photographing the bride and groom kissing. She also took over whenever I had to rewind or reload film, and backed me up on the important shots just in case something went wrong with mine.

I ALWAYS TRIED TO ADD HUMOR TO MY SHOTS!

Two days later, when I picked up the photos from the lab, however, I was stunned to see over 40 shots of Judy’s nicely manicured pinky finger, which apparently had been in front of the lens during most of the photos she’d taken. In one close-up photo of the bride’s face, it looked as if Judy’s finger was about to pick the bride’s nose.

And there were at least 25 photos of some rugged, dark-haired guy who wasn’t even a member of the wedding party. When I asked Judy why she had taken so many photos of him, she said, “Because I thought he was a real hunk!”

That did it. In a rare moment of extreme intelligence, I vowed never to do another wedding. And I never did, despite receiving phone calls from brides begging me to reconsider (mainly because I was cheap). 

I must confess, however, there were times when I was tempted to dig out all of my camera equipment and give the wedding photography business another try.

But every time I was tempted, all I had to do was picture myself feverish and nauseated with the flu, having to get up out of my sick bed to take pictures of people doing the chicken dance because there was no one else around to cover the wedding for me…and my desire to be a photographer magically disappeared.

#   #   #

CLICK HERE ==> https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/384106

STUCK IN THE POCONOS AT A NIGHTMARE HONEYMOON HOTEL (PART TWO)

In last week’s column, I started to tell you about the luxury suite at a Pocono Mountains resort my husband and I reserved back in the 1970s to treat ourselves to a second honeymoon.

The brochures had shown an elegant, Roman-styled hotel with lavishly decorated suites done in velvets, gold-leaf and marble. We learned the hard way that brochures don’t always tell the truth.

The first thing that struck us when we entered our suite was the overpowering odor of mildew.  When our eyes adjusted to the room’s darkness, we couldn’t believe what we saw.

By no stretch of the imagination were we standing in the luxurious Venetian suite pictured in the brochure (see last week's column for those photos) - the suite that had cost us a good chunk of our savings to reserve for a week. The walls were paneled in knotty pine, and the floors were covered with hideous-looking worn-out black and purple carpeting, which matched the fake velvet bedspread on the regular-shaped bed (it was supposed to have been heart-shaped).  The stains on the bedspread (and on the TV screen and ceiling!) defied description. 

IN TEARS ON THE VINYL LOVE SEAT!

On both sides of the bed, on rods hanging from the ceiling, were faded black and purple drapes.  The furniture in the room was made of cheap wood and vinyl (in either orange or turquoise!), which was torn and patched with duct tape.  The Roman-style "marble" fireplace looked like something straight out of a hunter’s cabin. 

In the photographs in the brochure, the sunken bathtubs were surrounded by  marble pillars and elegant Roman Statues pouring pitchers of water.  The sunken tub in our suite was dirty and was surrounded by scratched mirrors and purple carpeting that had more green mold on it than a loaf of year-old bread.  In the bottom of the tub was a rubber plug with a hairpin attached to it, replacing the little pull-ring that had fallen off.

THE SUNKEN TUB & PURPLE CARPET!

My husband and I broke all speed records running back to the main desk to complain.  We had plenty of company.

“Where’s the Roman goddess statues?” one ruggedly built man was shouting at the desk clerk as we entered the lobby.

“Those are only props,” the clerk explained. “We rent them when we take the brochure photos.”

The guest reached across the desk, grasped the clerk by the lapels and yanked him forward until their noses nearly touched.

“My new bride is up in our room crying her eyes out right now,” he said through clenched teeth. “This is our honeymoon, and she’s NOT happy...which makes ME unhappy! She wants her statues!” His grip tightened on the clerk’s lapels. “And she WILL have them...won’t she?”

“Y-yessir!” the clerk squeaked.

When it was our turn at the desk, we demanded our money back. We figured that no matter where we had to spend the night, it would be better than staying where we currently were.

THE "ROMAN" FIREPLACE!

“Impossible,” the clerk said, shaking his head. “We've already spent money on your food and entertainment for the week.  Besides that, you were informed of our 48-hour cancellation policy when you received your reservation confirmation.  Didn’t you read the fine print on the papers we mailed to you?”

My husband’s expression warned me that he was about to explode.  I hastily cut in, “Fine then, we’ll stay,” and practically yanked him out the door.

“Are you crazy?” my husband huffed as we headed back to our suite. “Do you really want to stay in this dump for a whole week?”

“We don’t have much choice,” I said. “We’ll lose all our money if we leave. And let’s face it, we can’t afford to stay anywhere else. So I think we should just try to make the best of it.”

Our week of torture was about to begin.

“GOOD MORNING HONEYMOONERS!  RISE AND SHINE!!”

My husband and I sat straight up in bed the next morning, our hearts pounding.

“Who or what the hell was that?” my husband snapped, looking around the room.

“IT’S 7 A.M. AND TIME FOR OUR BRIDES VS. GROOMS VOLLEYBALL TOURNAMENT!” the voice continued to boom.

“It’s coming from up there!” I said, pointing to a built-in loudspeaker up near the ceiling behind our bed.

My husband dragged the love seat over near the bed and stood on it to get a closer look. “There’s no off-switch on it,” he muttered.

“Welcome to summer camp!”  I joked.

We ended up, as most of the other couples did, using towels to muffle the loudspeaker.

As it turned out, summer camp was less regimented than this Poconos resort.  Everything was done according to a strict schedule, which was distributed during breakfast each morning. Our entire day was planned for us from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. Meals were served only at specific times, and we were told that if we missed them, we’d have to wait until the next meal to eat. It nearly was impossible to forget where we were supposed to be at a certain time, however, because the voice of “Uncle Weaver,” the resort’s activities director, constantly blared through the loudspeakers to remind us.

The first night in our suite, I was looking out of the window and happened to see several guests searching for something in the nearby woods.  Whenever a car approached, they’d duck behind trees, as if they were doing something illegal.

Over breakfast in the dining room the next morning, Barry and Cindy, our assigned table mates, confessed that they were one of the couples who had been out in the woods the night before.

“We were told we could burn only special ‘Pocono logs’ in our fireplace,” Barry explained. “They sell them in the lobby here for $2.50 each.  So we decided to save a few bucks and sneak out to the woods to find some of our own firewood!”

I thought he was kidding, because no one had mentioned logs to us when we’d checked in. But at the resort’s first “game hour,” I realized Barry had been telling the truth. The prizes the couples were competing for?  Fireplace logs!

But the logs weren’t the only extra expense we couples were hit with unexpectedly.  For example, the drinks in the nightclub were only $1 each…until the entertainment started, then the price jumped to $3.50.  At first, we didn’t mind paying the extra money, because we figured the entertainment would be worth it.  After all, the brochures had pictured everyone from Kenny Rogers to Paul Anka and Tom Jones performing at the resort.

Well, we must have chosen a week when all of the big-name performers were stricken with some terrible, debilitating illness because our nightclub featured the fantastic duo, “Juan and Maria,” a hugely pregnant woman and her platform-shoed husband, who did an off-key tribute to Sonny and Cher…when Maria wasn’t dashing off to the ladies’ room, that is.

The resort did go all out for Champagne Night, however.  On that night, all drinks were free, and two bands were scheduled to entertain.  The members of the first band, the Poets, who serenaded us with soft love songs for over an hour, were dressed-to-kill in crisp white tuxedos. Then, following a brief intermission, the second band, Frankie and the Corvettes, took the stage.

Attired in studded black leather jackets, boots and chains, with greasy slicked-back hair and sunglasses, they belted out a series of ‘50s rock-‘n-roll songs.  I was sitting there, clapping my hands to the music, when I noticed that my husband was staring intently at the group.  His expression clearly looked bewildered.  I asked him what was wrong.

He narrowed his eyes at the stage. “I just realized that the Poets and Frankie and the Corvettes are the same guys. We’re not getting two groups for entertainment – they just recycled the first one!”

I took a closer look and was stunned to see he was right!

The field trips weren’t much fun, either.  Our itinerary listed a day trip to a supposedly breathtaking area called Winona Falls, so all of us signed up for it.  No one told us, however, until we gathered for the trip the next afternoon, that transportation was not provided - or that the falls were about 10 miles away.  My husband and I were one of the few couples who had a car because most of the others had come by plane, so we ended up being a taxi service for all the field trips.  There were as many as eight people stuffed into our car at times.

And once we reached the falls, we were on our own – no guides, no one from the lodge to tell us where to go. We ended up wandering through the woods for three hours – lost. We even missed our scheduled dinner that night, we got back so late.

After several days of being mercilessly chased by the resort photographer everywhere we went (he even asked us if he could shoot some photos of us in our bathtub!), eating mystery meat at every meal, playing the activity director’s inane games such as “pass the string down your partner’s pants,” and being hit with hidden costs that never were mentioned in our contract ($1 per bullet at the skeet-shooting range and $5 for a 15-minute horseback ride through knee-deep mud, for example) we, along with the other guests, were talking mutiny.

So on the last day we were there, all of us gathered around the indoor pool and unanimously voted to stage a protest.  No longer, we vowed, were we going to adhere to schedules, play silly games, or eat food that looked as if it came out of a can with Lassie’s picture on the label.

We went into town and stocked up on burgers, fries and pizza, then spent all night, right up until dawn, sitting around the pool, eating and talking.

Because of our little “sit-in,” the dining-room meals went uneaten, Juan and Maria sang to an empty house, and the nightly game hour had no players.  It was the best night of our vacation, not only because we tossed out our schedules and did whatever we wanted to do, but because we had the chance to really get to know the other couples and share all of our horror stories about the resort.

Although we never did receive even one penny of our money back, I was able to gain a small measure of revenge by mailing enlargements of my photos of the resort, clearly showing false advertising, to the Pennsylvania Better Business Bureau.  A few weeks later, I was informed that armies of construction workers and interior decorators had descended upon the resort.

We’d thought our vacation might have been a little less painful if we had won the resort’s grand-prize of the week, which reportedly was worth nearly $500. 

Well, as luck would have it, Barry and Cindy, our table-mates, ended up winning it. And when they received their prize, they actually were sorry they’d won.

It was a voucher for another week at the resort.

  

                                                      #   #   #

THE RESORT (AND ITS SAGGING BALCONIES) NOW STANDS ABANDONED

                                                     #   #   #

CLICK HERE ==>https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/384106

STUCK IN THE POCONOS AT A NIGHTMARE HONEYMOON HOTEL - (PART ONE)

Travelers nowadays don’t realize just how fortunate they are. If they are thinking about staying at some hotel or resort they’ve heard about, they can go online, check out the reviews and find out if the place is the luxurious palace they’re imagining it is...or some run-down old roach-motel.

All I can say is that back in the early 1970s, when my husband and I were planning our “dream” vacation, we could have saved ourselves a lot of money and misery if the Internet had been around to help guide us.

After much deliberation, we'd finally decided to treat ourselves to a second honeymoon at one of those fancy honeymoon resorts in the Pocono  Mountains in Pennsylvania. We sent away for dozens of brochures, then spent hours carefully studying them, weighing the pros and cons of each resort.  Finally, we selected what we thought would be the perfect spot for our romantic getaway.

The brochure described the resort as a romantic trip back in time to the days of Ancient Rome.  It featured a man-made Venetian lake,  “Roman Forum” suites, sunken Roman baths, marble fireplaces, heart-shaped beds, Romeo-and-Juliet-style balconies, moonlight gondola rides, and horseback riding.

1973 BROCHURE PHOTO

1973 BROCHURE PHOTO OF BATH

What could be more romantic?  Even more impressive was the resort’s list of nightly entertainment:  Kenny Rogers, Frank Sinatra, Jr., Frankie Avalon, and Rodney Dangerfield, to name just a few.  We were sold.

We called the resort and were instructed to select a suite from the brochure (the nicer the suite, the higher the price, of course) then send a check for the full amount.  The package price, according to the employee, included all lodging, meals and gratuities.

“Once you get here, the only thing you have to worry about is enjoying yourselves!” he cheerfully added.

After more deliberation, my husband and I finally selected the “Coliseum Suite,” which, according to the photos, was lavishly decorated in red velvet, genuine marble, gold-leaf accents, and even had pillars and statues surrounding the sunken Roman bath.  It was expensive, but we wanted to completely surround ourselves in luxury.

The drive to the Poconos went smoothly, but when we reached our destination, the resort was nowhere to be found.

“I’m telling you, the map in the brochure (no GPS back then, either) says it should be right here!” my husband insisted after we had driven up and down the same winding road at least a dozen times.

I sighed. “There’s nothing on this road but those faded pink barracks over there,” I said, pointing toward the backs of some old buildings. “And they look as if they’ve been deserted for years.”

“Those aren’t barracks,” my husband said. “By the looks of them, they probably were part of some old factory at one time.  And judging by the color, they must have made something like cotton candy there!”

“Or Pepto Bismol,” I muttered.  

Hoping we might be able to find a caretaker or someone who could give us directions, we turned down the driveway that led to the pink barracks/candy factory.  When we reached the front of the first building and read the sign, our mouths fell open.

We had arrived at our luxury resort.

As we sat in the car, too stunned to move, a man with a camera leapt out from behind a nearby clump of trees and snapped our photo.

“Welcome, honeymooners!” he cheerfully greeted. “I’m Tom, your resort photographer, and I’ll be following you around all week taking candid shots of you, which you can purchase at the end of the week!”

My husband frowned at me. “We’re outta here!”

“They have all of our money,” I reminded him.

We went inside.  The man at the desk also was cheerful. He checked us in, handed us a stack of itineraries, then called for an employee to show us to our suite, three buildings away.

“What’s that swamp over there?” I asked the employee as we followed him down a cracked, weed-covered, narrow sidewalk.

“That’s the Venetian Lake,” he said matter-of-factly.

“Is that where the gondola rides are supposed to be?”  My husband seemed almost afraid to ask.

The man shook his head. “Not any more.  They all sank.”

Silently, we followed him up a flight of chipped concrete steps to our second-floor suite.

“Oh, avoid going out on the balconies,” he warned us. “They’re not safe.”

So much for Romeo and Juliet, I thought.  The balconies on the place looked so old and run-down, it wouldn’t have surprised me to learn that the real Romeo and Juliet actually had used them.

The employee unlocked the door and threw it open. “Welcome to your romantic suite!” he said, with an exaggerated sweep of his arm.

My husband and I stepped inside and froze.  We couldn’t believe our eyes.

“This is some kind of joke, right?” my husband asked the employee.

“Please tell us this is a joke,” I whispered, barely able to find my voice.

The employee acted as if we were invisible. “Enjoy your week!” he said, smiling broadly, then disappeared.

What did our “luxury” suite look like?  And did we stay for the entire week?  I’ll tell you more about it next week.

                                                     #   #   #

CLICK HERE ==> https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/384106