The descent into chaos was accelerating.
No matter how hard the girl at the podium tried to restore order, the forces of randomness and entropy continually reasserted themselves, overwhelming her and her two, twenty-something, black polo-wearing colleagues.
It all started with the Chow Chows.
You know, those puffy, wrinkly-faced, ill-tempered Chinese dogs?
Which, apparently, will rip your throat out when sufficiently provoked.
So I’ve heard.
I’ll get to them in a minute.
First, I thought I’d taken all the necessary steps to avoid such a scene.
Upon checking into the hotel and handing my keys off to the valet, the dude at the stand asked for my phone number.
I’ll send you a text with a link, he explained.
And, when you need your car, just use the link to request it, and we’ll have it waiting for you by the time you get downstairs.
Cool.
I’m all about using technology to make life easier.
I hit the link, as instructed, the following day, about forty-five minutes before I needed my car.
Better to give myself plenty of time, I thought.
When I got down to the valet stand, I saw my car, sitting by itself, in the outer-most lane in the area in front of the hotel entrance.
There were no other cars in sight.
That’s my car over there, I said to the two guys at the podium.
I guess I didn’t need to request it forty-five minutes in advance, huh?
No, they said.
Ask for it right before you leave your room, and that will give us plenty of time to have it out in front by the time you get here.
Okay. Lesson learned.
And that’s exactly what I did later that evening.
I had dinner reservations, but was running ahead of schedule.
And that was fortunate.
When I arrived at the valet stand, I could immediately sense the rising tide of disorder.
There were cars everywhere.
Half belonged to people who were checking in, half to those seeking to leave.
Five people were arranged in a semicircle around the valet’s podium, vying for the poor girl who was running the show’s attention.
They all tried to speak at once.
“Sorry,” she pleaded with them. “We’re understaffed.”
Of course you are, I thought.
So’s everyone these days.
And perhaps I would have been more sympathetic had the hotel not totally done this to itself.
Despite having a large garage on the property, the only parking option was to valet.
You couldn’t park your car yourself.
Maybe there were legitimate reasons for that.
Or maybe it was a ploy to extract additional fees from guests.
Don’t know, don’t care.
All I wanted was my damn car.
I informed the beleaguered girl that I had requested my car via the app.
Just as I was supposed to have done.
“And what’s the name?” she asked me, checking her computer.
“Right,” she said. “Your car should be on its way.”
And then she repeated, “We’re understaffed this evening . . .”
Yup.
I moved to the side of the valet stand to wait.
And a very bizarre scene began to unfold.
A black minivan was parked immediately in front of the hotel entrance.
Sounds of dogs barking emanated loudly from inside it.
Three, grandparent-aged people stood behind the car, two women and a man.
One of the women, slouched, with thinning hair and a highly unfortunate red dye job, lifted open the van’s rear door.
Inside, I could see two Chows occupying individual wire cages, one of which was doing all the barking.
“Quiet!” the woman demanded.
Upon hearing this, the other woman came to stand beside her to help calm the increasingly pissed-off dog.
“Uuuhhhghhhh!” she groaned. “Uuuuughhhh . . .”
It was a guttural, unnatural sound that an unhappy Neanderthal might have made to its mate, not a twenty-first century old lady to a Chow.
The dog kept barking.
So, the two women continued, alternating.
“Quiet!” the one would say.
Then, “Uuuhhhghhhh!” from the other.
The man with them just stood there, not saying anything.
Which seemed about right.
This went on for a couple minutes before the women finally gave up and started to unload the minivan.
The man wheeled over a luggage cart, which the red-dyed-hair lady began to load.
It was eventually revealed there were four dogs in the car, along with a bunch of dog gear and luggage.
It was a slow process.
And all but ground the car-parking and retrieving process to a halt.
One of the valets, noticing this, pitched in to help.
And thus decreased the odds that I’d see my car any time soon.
I continued to stand there, feeling both annoyed and amused.
Then came the dance girls.
A steady stream of nine-year-olds with moms, dads, and huge, rolling trunks began to flow out from inside the hotel.
The girls all looked the same from the neck up:
Like the women from Robert Palmer’s “Simply Irresistible” video.
Sort of.
They all had slicked-back, tightly pinned hair and heavy, heavy makeup.
But the makeup was all black—lipstick, eye liner . . . all of it.
It gave them a creepy, Goth kind of look.
Like Marilyn Manson.
Yes, that’s right.
They were Simply Irresistible Marilyn Mansons.
Which no nine-year-old should ever be.
The moms’ tee shirts helped me piece it all together.
Each read, “Dance Mom,” in sparkly letters.
And even one of the dads, built like The Rock, had on a tee shirt that read, “Dance Dad.”
Guys like him can pull off such things.
Guys like me cannot.
Anyway.
The dance troupe was apparently in a hurry to get to a competition.
So, all the moms closed in around the podium to give the valet girl hell.
But all she could do in return was plead, “Yes, I totally understand. We’ll get the cars down as quickly as we can. But we’re understaffed this evening . . .”
This, as one of her two colleagues continued to unload the Chows and all their gear.
The dance moms became progressively pissed.
The dogs continued to bark.
The dog grandmas continued to shout, “Quiet!” and, “Uuuhhhghhhh!”
The dog grandpa just kept his head down and his mouth shut.
It was all a bit surreal.
Is this some kind of act? I wondered.
Is this all being staged for my benefit?
Will a clown on a unicycle eventually ride by?
Will there be jugglers?
It was quite an odd slice of humanity assembled around the valet stand that evening.
And I was grateful I had given myself a little extra time to take it all in.
But I still wanted my damn car.
It was about then that I shifted my gaze to the outer lane of the parking area.
And there, once again, sitting all by itself, was my car.
It looked like it had been there for a while.
I maneuvered through the Chows, Chow gear, luggage, dance girls, dance moms, and dance dads to the front of the valet stand.
That’s my car, I told the girl.
May I have the keys?
She began sifting through the thirty or so sets that lay haphazardly in the top drawer of the podium.
When she finally found them, she acted as though it was the first thing that had gone right for her the entire evening.
Poor kid.
“Ah! Here they are,” she said. “Sorry about that.”
And then she reminded me, “We’re understaffed this evening.”
Yup.
Got it.
And then I walked to my car.
Wondering if dinner would be even half as interesting.
But hoping it wouldn’t,
Because I’d had enough of humanity
And Chows
And dance girls
And valets
For one night.