Oh boy! Sometimes I write these posts and I think to myself ‘yea, whoever reads this might think I am a monster. Meh.’

You know what movie was alright? Tucker and Dale vs Evil. It’s not the Criterion Collection, but in its own way it very cute. Particularly, the whole conceit wherein you are seeing the events unfold from two perspectives (the hapless hicks who don’t understand who their behavior is coming off, and the terrified college kids) really makes the movie. And what can I say, I really love that. Can you imagine how many situations in life really went down like that, where a person was scared for their life only because they had misunderstood what was going on?

Well guess what? I got to see that happen in REAL LIFE!

So around 2:30 AM one Friday night at the hotel some guests come to me and tell me that there is a young girl passed out on a sofa. Going to check on her, I find a very young looking well dressed girl, slumbering peacefully on the couch. She seems to be breathing without problems, and when the other guests poke and prod her she responds enough so that I am not concerned. I decide immediately to kick the can up the chain by calling security. Security woke her and gave me a name to look up.

She’s not a guest at this hotel. A few minutes later someone asked her where she thought she was and we figured out what hotel she was meant to be in, thankfully only a couple of blocks away. Security tries to tell her to get an uber, but the girl is too drunk to figure it out. In the meantime she keeps trying to wonder off here and there, and even tried to follow me into my office (the same office where I sit and right this blogpost, an hour after the incident).

At some point security realizes that this girl is never going to figure it out, and asks whether I can call the other hotel to see if they can arrange for a ride of some kind of a ride. They were happy to oblige us, and told us to have her ready outside.

So I led the girl towards the door with a lot of resistance, her wandering away from me at every opportunity. And it was only a 15 foot walk. At the door, she kept on apologizing, and then muttering unintelligibly. It was only at that point that I realized just how drunk she was, as I was steadily getting drunker with every word she muttered. Finally the van pulled up and I tried to indicate that she needed to get in. Suddenly there was a lot of hesitation.

In what I thought was a very gentlemany manner, I held the door open for her and indicated towards the van. When I turned to look at her tears were welling up in her eyes, and she faintly muttered “I don’t want to get into that van, I just want to go to my room”. And at that point, I recognized the look on her face: it was pure terror. She was stood in front of me thinking that we were setting her up to be kidnapped, and would soon be at the center of some satanic cult’s pentagram. I was suddenly able to imagine this whole scenario from her point of view; we were some pretty scary looking individuals who roused her from her slumber and then wouldn’t let her go into her room, despite her protests. We then convinced her to go outside in the middle of the night and get into some strange van, with no real understanding of why.

Yea, I’d be terrified.

“Don’t worry” I said, placating, “they’re here to take you to your hotel”

She walked towards the van like someone marching towards the gates of hell. Even the nice lady who came to pick her up figured it out, and chimed in with “Don’t worry sweetie, we are just here to give you a ride”.

She got into the van, and the nice lady turned to me just so that I could see how hard she was rolling her eyes. I thanked her.

I like to think that one day, some therapist will be sending their kids to college and the girl’s story.