Pajama Party

This week marks our two-year anniversary on this No Days Off website. Today we have two posts for your reading pleasure. One from Kerry. One from Krys, our grammar and manners maven. Enjoy!

Hello, dear readers of KerryDougherty.com. It’s Krys. Kerry’s un-editor.

Sometimes I suggest column topics to Kerry before checking her spelling and whatnot. She rarely listens. Don’t worry; there’s no reining her in.

But tonight I’m so hot under my post-turkey collar that my Thanksgiving feeling has flown out the window and I’m in the mood to tell you a dreadful story myself.

On the ride back home from driving our daughter clear to DC to catch an Amtrak train on one of the worst weekends for interstate highway travel (do NOT ask me why she could not catch said train in convenient Norfolk – it has something to do with Amtrak’s policy for ticketed pets) I had plenty of time to think about how unmannerly our society has gotten.

Imagine this: I am standing in Richmond’s Main Street Station a week ago waiting for the arrival of daughter and cat from New York, studying delightful archival photos of train travel back in its heyday when people dressed nicely for their trips: skirts, slacks, shirts, ties(!), heels, stockings, pocketbooks, penny loafers. Hair was coiffed, people were groomed, faces were washed.

This last point is key. Washed.

One week later, a.k.a. yesterday morning, I wake up in the Embassy Suites in Alexandria after our madcap ride to DC the day before in which we MISS our daughter’s train in Alexandria because of absolutely hellish traffic on I-95 but chase and CATCH said train at its next stop in Union Station and toss her and the cat onboard with 15 minutes to spare. Wave, blow kisses through the window. Whew.

And so, sad but vastly relieved, we check into our hotel because we are simply too tired to fight traffic twice in the same day, console ourselves with drinks and chips courtesy of the manager’s special and the next morning her father and I ride the elevator downstairs to our lovely hotel atrium complete with potted palms and splashing fountain to have coffee and breakfast.

And we meet the great unwashed.

What is WRONG with people? The occasional toddler in a footed sleeper in a hotel dining room at breakfast is, well, adorable. I just want to snatch it up out of its highchair, cuddle and kiss it.

But spare me someone over the age of say, 5, in pajamas in public. WHERE do hotel guests get the idea that their nightwear is appropriate for a hotel common area??? Are we having a sleepover? Or are we paying guests, each with expectations of the other regarding conduct and appearance?

Teens or grownups in fuzzy onesies and slippers are a rude travel nightmare, especially before coffee and on an empty stomach. Sunday morning there were at least two braless women in strappy tank tops and flannel pants, hair still bunched into satin sleeping snoods. They can’t dress, run a comb through their curls, pop up a bun or a ponytail?

People’s derrieres were exposed above their elastic-waist pants, they wore flip-flops, grown men stood in the buffet line in boxer shorts and wrinkled t-shirts.

They were not at HOME. They were with STRANGERS. They were with ME.

Staying in a hotel requires certain protocol and decorum.

What is happening to us? It’s bad enough that nothing is left to the imagination anymore since stretch fabrics came into our lives, but visiting a hotel dining area should still require certain niceties before joining the crowd for eggs and bacon.

It’s the holiday travel season, people. Book hotels, be polite to desk clerks, appreciative of hotel staff, make friendly small talk in elevators.

In the morning, brush your teeth, put on some pants, come down for breakfast and help make good memories.