So, I'm on tour for
Fool, staying up way too late signing books, and getting up way too early to catch airplanes or do interviews, and today, at dawn, housekeeping knocks on my hotel room door to tell me that they don't really need to do anything, they just wanted to be sure that I really meant to hang the "Do Not Disturb" sign out there on the knob.
And I notice something, for the first time ever, probably because I'm so tired I'm crawling to the door. It's a second peep hole in the door. About two feet below the normal peep hole.
And I'm thinking, OMG, it's a peep hole for looking at someone's junk before you let them in! (Okay, I realize that you probably already figured it was for people who were in a wheelchair or really tiny, but in my defense, it was early, I was tired, and there was an empty bottle of Nyquil on the nightstand, so I may have been a little congested at some point before the blackout.)
Anyway, I wondered if this was installed after one of those embarrassing incidents with a Republican congressman saying, "No, I swear I thought that hooker was a woman, I really have accepted Jesus and unregulated capitalism as my personal savior, and I would never let a guy shag me in the exhaust pipe on purpose, and to prove it, I will not stay in any hotel room that doesn't have a portal for viewing someone's junk before letting them in, so this will never, never happen again. Tax cuts."
But no, that's not what it's for. Right? Except for one thing. Unless the person coming to the door is also in a wheelchair or tiny, you will be looking at their junk. So, if you happen to be visiting the Ambassador to Barundi, let's say, who I think we all know is like three feet tall, the first thing he will see when you knock on the door, is your elegantly coiffed naughty bits. And that is not putting diplomacy first.
I found myself dismayed at this revelation. I thought, wow, that could be the reason that our diplomatic status around the world has declined so much: Tiny ambassadors looking through the bottom peep hole to see Secretary Rice standing there and thinking, "Oh my God, it looks like you have Don King in a scissor lock out there!" How you gonna fight radical fundamentalism and whatnot with that picture running through your brain?
I'm just saying. But now, it's even worse! What if the ambassador of Barundi looks out there to see the new secretary of state, and instead of thinking that it's the representative of a shining beacon of freedom and human possibility in the world, he says:
"Oh, hi. You must be Brazilian."
I'm a little queasy. It's probably the Nyquil. Anyway, my new policy is to just stand to the side and say, "Who is it?" In the interest of world peace, I am never looking through the bottom peep hole again.
Just saying.