Smoke and Mirrors

About a year or so ago, my daughter Katie attended a birthday slumber party at the Radisson Hotel on North Beach in Corpus Christi. This is where several work acquaintances of mine stayed this week while attending a planning conference at the Omni Bayfront, which was full up.

It was Melissa's 13th birthday, so her parents made a pretty big deal of it. They had around 20 girls camping out in the hotel room, which it turns out is a slight violation of maximum occupancy policy. Additionally, local preteen heartthrob celebrity Baby Bash was staying in the room two doors down, so the girls were excited to the point of extreme squeakiness (I can't speak for Mr. Bash).

Lucky Melissa received a smoke machine for her birthday, and much excitement ensued. Naturally, the girls couldn't wait to fire that sucker up and fill the hotel room with thick, aromatic fumes. Which promptly set off the smoke detector.

This caused a bit of a disturbance and brought the manager running. Well, since the hotel room was only supposed to sleep 4, about 16 girls crowded out onto the balcony to hide from him while he questioned Melissa and her mom about what had set off the smoke detector. Katie informs me that Baby Bash was also annoyed by the disturbance.

The manager discovered the huddle on the balcony (it would probably have been difficult not to, what with all the squeaking), but was apparently very good-natured about the whole thing; so the slumber party continued as planned, and I didn't hear about any of this until I picked up Katie the next morning.

The valuable lesson I took away from this episode was: Never set off a smoke machine in a hotel room.

I told this story to some coworkers at lunch today, but they didn't seem fully to appreciate how cool smoke machines are. I wish I had a small portable one of my own, that I could strap onto my back underneath my blouse, so I could have an aura of perfumed smoke everywhere I went. Wouldn't that be so awesome? It would be kind of like having your own personal backup band to follow you around playing your theme song, except, you know, subtle. Everyone would know there was something, just something about me, but nobody would be able to put their finger on quite what, exactly, that something is.

Don't you wish your girlfriend was a freak like me?