The Only Time I Ever Stayed in a Hyatt

Well, I have fallen behind on Blog It July. Oops! I'm going to play a little catch up.

Blog It July Day #9
What is the oddest thing you have ever seen in real life?

This is the kind of question that immediately makes my mind go blank. Without question, I have seen some pretty odd things. But trying to think about them makes it impossible for me to remember. It's like the opposite of the "don't think about elephants" phenomenon. 

What does come to mind is one of the oddest experiences I ever had, which I think is close enough to qualify as an answer.

I was 18. My parents and I had driven to Pittsburgh to attend an event for incoming students. After the event, they were driving home and I was doing an overnight in a dorm to see what it was like. Then I would fly home the next day, by myself. While I had flown before, I had never flown alone, and I was a little nervous.

Despite some confusion with which bus to take to the airport, I managed to get to the terminal in time, and it seemed like everything would go off without a hitch. The weather had other ideas. There was so much snow coming down in Chicago, where I was supposed to connect, that my flight was delayed. And delayed again. And, finally, cancelled. It was late by the time they announced the cancellation, and I would have to spend the night. The airport said that, because the cancellation was due to weather and not the fault of the airline, no one would receive complementary rooms.

There I was, a high school girl with hardly any money and very little airport experience. I really didn't want to spend the night in the terminal. Then, I had an idea. I would find someone in a similar situation and ask if she wanted to split the cost of a hotel room. I looked around at the people waiting at the service desk, and spotted a girl who didn't seem too much older than me. She had clearly been crying, and one of her eyes was big and swollen and buggy. She looked totally crazy, but she also looked harmless and freaked out, so I thought she seemed like a good bet.

She looked a little like this. (Okay, not quite.)

I approached this girl - I'm not going to use her name, but let's call her Marsha - and asked if she'd be interested in sharing a hotel room. Marsha told me she didn't need to split the cost, because she'd freaked out enough to be quietly given a free room. (I think it was probably the bug eye that did it.) I thought I was out of luck, but Marsha said she was afraid to stay in the hotel alone, and asked if I wanted to join her anyway. Desperate for a comfortable bed, I said yes.

The seating area in the Pittsburgh Airport Hyatt bar

 We went straight to the hotel bar, where she got a drink (she was older than I thought, I think 21). We talked a little, and I found out she was a hair dresser from rural Idaho, where the primary social activity was (and I swear I am not making this up) driving slowly up and down Main Street. It was a very nice hotel, a Hyatt, and when we got to the room, I was happy to head straight to bed. But Marsha refused to turn off all the lights, and kept checking the curtains (which was ridiculous, because we weren't even on the first floor). I asked what was going on.

"My boyfriend and I visited Gettysburg," Marsha explained, "and the guide told all these stories about the ghosts that live there." She went off explaining about the different ghosts for a while, then said, in a whisper, "I think I'm being haunted." She checked the curtains again.

My eyebrows were now so far up my forehead that they were practically in my hair, but Marsha was providing me with free lodging in a pinch, and I wasn't in any place to judge. It was hard to settle down, because she refused to turn off the lights completely, and she kept reminiscing about Idaho as if it was Paradise on Earth.

In the morning, I slipped out quietly and made my early flight home. I hardly remember the trip to Pittsburgh, but those twelve hours in the airport are clear as day.