Is That Our Hotel?

Over Spring Break a friend and I decided to take our combined total of five children to Tulsa for an overnight trip to the zoo and aquarium. By “friend” I’m referring to someone whose daughter is my daughter’s best friend, whom I have shared dinners and cocktails and girls’ nights out and dancing under the influence. We like each other, but we’ve never spent hours in the car and shared living quarters before. I expected us to learn a lot about each other. What I didn’t expect was that our children would be the ones doing the revealing.

On the outskirts of Tulsa, the Hard Rock casino towers a good – I don’t know – twelve stories. All five children were in awe.

“Is that our hotel?”

“No.”

“Oh, man! You should have reserved us at THAT hotel.”

Clearly, the children don’t get out much. Just when I was beginning to really doubt my maternal ability to expose my children to the right influences, I was saved by the girl who was not my daughter.

“Will the hotel have crickets?” she asked. “Because the hotels we stay at always have crickets.”