grrlTravels

Bogeymen under the bed

What is it about people who design hotel rooms? First of all they choose the strangest combinations of loud wallpaper, stain- and glance-repelling carpeting, and synthetic scratchy comforters. Hang a few bad paintings on the wall, throw in a chair or two and voila. Mission accomplished.

My point being--what's the deal with the mirrors? I don't have a million mirrors in my house, and I don't know many people who do. A mirror in a bathroom, one in the bedroom, maybe one to open up a dim hallway or something in the living room over the fireplace. In the first hotel we stayed in in Orlando there were 3 gigantic mirrors all competing with each other. Two were opposite each other and over the jacuzzi tub. I am not at a point in my life (if I ever was) where I need to see myself coming AND going while climbing into and out of the tub. These were BIG mirrors, folks. Like the kind you would expect to see in an airport restroom or a amusement park fun house. Also, another L-A-R-G-E mirror facing the hallway in the bathroom.

So I looked at the mirrors and wondered about sadistic tendencies of hotel designers. I avoided the big tub. And I turned out the lights and went to bed. And in the middle of the night I got up to answer the call of nature. As I was walking to the bathroom I was smacked in the face with a childhood fear that apparently I've never overcome.

I never liked looking into mirrors in the dark. All you'd see was vague moving shapes and as a child they reminded me of ghosts. Many times I caught a glimpse of myself out of the corner of my eye in a mirror in a darkened room and scared myself silly. I developed a way to walk to and from the bathroom so as not to look at any of the mirrors on the way by looking down at the floor at all of the critical points. It took some practice, but I had a lot of motivation to master the course. No more "mirror ghosts".

And there I was in a hotel in Orlando, navigating to the bathroom keeping my eyes on the floor, reducing my peripheral vision, and looking neither to the left or the right. And suddenly I remembered my childhood fears and realized that all these years later I was in bogeyman mode. I think it's so ingrained these days that I just do it without even thinking. But the superabundance of mirrored surfaces really hit the point home. It was like walking on a tightrope blindfolded in a hurricane. Ok, not really, but there were a LOT of mirrors. Big ones, did I mention that?

It's bad when you prefer looking at hotel carpeting to seeing yourself in the mirror. I'm still trying to decide which is scarier.

Posted by grrlTravels at November 18, 2004 3:08 PM