The Hotel Fairy

[lydamorehouse]

I forgot to write about the one other strangely amusing part of WorldCON.

Naomi and I had a room fairy--and I don't mean the FABULOUS kind. 

When I first arrived, I set some stuff down on the bed--my program guide, badge, and... my glasses.  I have a tendency to take my glasses off a lot because I can actually see really well in the middle-range.  I need bifocals for reading and distance correction, specifically for driving.  But, when I'm walking around the house (or hotel room) or working on my computer, I see perfectly without them.  Hence, the glasses hit the matress.

I went to the bathroom and my glasses DISAPPEARED.

Luckily, Shawn packs for me, so not ony did I have a first aid kit (you think I'm joking?), but she also packed my spare pair of glasses.  Since I had to run off to some event or other, I put those on, figuring that FOR SURE my glasses would show up at some point.

When I told Naomi about this, I think she thought I was a little crazy, until the hairbrush incident.  She was getting ready to go out to a party and stopped to brush her hair.  I watched her set it down on her suitcase.  She went to the bathroom and then couldn't find the hairbrush anywhere.  So, I said to her, "I think we have a room fairy.  Offer silver."  So, she made a great production of offering a quarter to the room fairies and she dug through her suitcase ONE MORE TIME, and, lo and behold, the hairbrush appeared.

Now, back to my glasses.... being the kind of laissez faire personality that I am, I kind of didn't worry about finding my glasses until it was time to pack.  Then, Naomi and I did a full and complete search of the room.  We moved chairs, looked under beds, and nearly turned everything out.  Finally, in frustration, we offered silver again.  I left a quarter on the bed (housekeeping had already come), and told Naomi to let me know if the fairies ever returned my glasses.

They did.  Shortly after I boarded the train home, I got a text.  The glasses had reappeared under the bed near the headboard.  Considering that I'd left them in the middle of the bed, that's a plausible but weird place for them to have been discovered. 

I'm telling you, room fairies.

Naomi was surprised that the fairies didn't actually take the silver.  But, in my imaginary world, it was the offer that counted both times.  Trade is always acceptable to the fair folk, particularly for something shiny, right?

Comments

[john jackson (from livejournal.com)]

Well, unless the quarters were pre-1964 there was no silver for them to take. That is probably why the glasses were under the headboard and not on the bed. They appreciated the thought but without real silver they aren't gonna bother returning them exactly back where they found them.