Hotels

But hotel rooms are just naturally creepy places, don't you think? I mean, how many people have slept in that bed before you? How many of them were sick? How many were losing their minds? How many were perhaps thinking about reading a few final verses from the Bible in the drawer of the nightstand beside them and then hanging themselves in the closet beside the TV? Brrrr. In any case, let's check in, shall we? Here's your key... and you might take time to notice what those four innocent numbers add up to. It's just down the hall.

Like I said before, I'm by myself now. And since I saw 1408 back in the beginning of the summer, I haven't been at a hotel, let alone by myself. And they really are naturally creepy places. I'm sitting in a room with a table where my laptop overlooks the TV, the bed, and a chair set off to the side with a lamp perched above it. The hallway is dimly lit with faint, etched patterns in the walls. Two paintings grace my room with nature scenes.

What I think I like the least is that on the TV there are cable channels and since I've been home after seeing the movie there has been a lot of trashy television. To be perfectly honest, I just want to flip through the channels and not really have to be on guard, but I have no choice. The first menu that greets me when the television comes on is a TV On Demand menu that has unrated TV shows like Jerry Springer and Blind Date. Below that is Adult Programming.

A brief aside...I can't remember where I read it, but someone wrote that as a child when she saw the label "adult literature," she thought it meant that the entire book or magazine had only words in it. Then she grew up to find out that it was quite the contrary.

So I skip those options and flip through the channels and instead of movies playing on cable TV which was all I really wanted, it's television shows. Rather than any kind of real quality, all of them feature a lot of nudity and sexual content. One of them is even about a serial killer. Is this really what we call "entertainment"?

Whenever I hear in priesthood meetings about all the rules the brethren should follow to protect themselves, my first reaction is to think to myself, lame. But I end up adopting most of them and now I'm really grateful that I have a filter on my computer, and that the parental controls are activated on the TVs at home. It's nice to not have to be on guard when all I want is a little diversion. It's just the diversion from the daily grind that I want, not my moral values. It helps also that I only watch a few television shows and pretty much only sports.

Ladies, it really is a battle for us guys. I hope you realize the lengths we have to go to insulate ourselves these kinds of influences. Even the good guys have to consciously fight that battle. And don't think that you're guy is above that influence, because none of us are.

Hotels are naturally creepy places, but not really for the reasons that Stephen King brings up. Although I'm sure that could be one consideration. What's creepy is that for a lot of guys what they leave behind is not just home, but their inhibitions.