#497: Spanking, Snickering…OMG!

The laughing outside my hotel room woke me up. I looked at my watch laying on the nightstand.

It was 1:05 a.m.

In the wing of the Madrid hotel I was staying, there were only two rooms… isolated from the rest of the hotel by a big, heavy door…and now the guests of the other room had returned and were standing in our shared hallway.

Laughing.

My body had only begun catching up on sleep after having been pushed to walk 200 miles across Spain, but a bigger deal than that was my watch alarm would ring at 4:50 a.m. I’d soon be starting my last trek across Madrid, hopping three trains to get to the airport…and then catching a non-stop, 12-hour flight home.

It took some key fumbling from my hotel neighbors before their door shut, and the laughing was then muted.

Silence had returned.

But…

Fifteen minutes later, the water pipes made themselves heard. It was a cool, but VERY old renovated building once owned by Spain’s Royal Family…and the water pipes were loud. I waited for the shower to end so the noise would also.

It did.
Sleep could return.

Except…

A few minutes later, the pipes started singing again. A second shower had started. Two people… two showers…the noise would end soon.

It did.
Sleep time again.

Until…

I heard strange…repeated…noises.

“Is that…spanking?”

The noises were very loud. The new unusual sound set my senses on full alert for a fourth time. Yep. It WAS spanking. The repeated sounds kept…repeating.

Spank.
Spank.
Spank.

And then…

A new sound joined the mix.

“Is that…moaning?”

Spank.
Moan.

Spank.
Moan.

Spank.
Moan.

With continued listening, I was certain a paddle was involved…and well, hey…it doesn’t take an expert of any kind to figure out what was going on across my hotel hallway…NOW at 2:00 am.

And it wasn’t stopping.

So there I was…

Lying in bed.
NOW wide awake.
Eyes even WIDER open.

I couldn’t help BUT listen.

I mean…really…what would YOU do? Knock on the door and say: “Excuse me, but your…ummm…spanking is extra loud. Is it possible to lighten the spank?”

I waited until the spanking spanked itself out.

Finally…

The silence was restored.
My snickering stopped.

Time to sleep again.

Until…

“You gotta be kidding me!”

The Spanking Chronicles had a Part II.

Same paddle sounds…except now the follow-up moan was WAY different in tonality. It was a deeper sound….more like…ummm…well…male.

Now no way no how am I an expert or even a knowledgeable amateur on any of what I KNEW was going on in the room next door…but I’m positive that there had just been a switch in…ummm…well…you figure it out.

“OMG! How long can this Game last?” I thought… amazed by my unique glimpse into the world of…Whatever.

My watch now read 2:55 a.m.
Evidently, the Game can be played a longgg time.

I desperately needed sleep.

Being that I’m taller than airplane seats account for, I can never get comfortable finding my sleep zone on a long flight. This sleep tonight was super important for me before getting on the plane for the 12-hour flight home. Two hours of listening to spanking in the earliest morning hours was not going to let that happen.

Bottom line?

I would live in a state of deep, uncomfortable tiredness all the next day. I got stuck staring at the small airplane TV screen in front of me for twelve hours watching a wave of previously seen Harry Potter movies.

So…

You’re probably wondering how I’m going to make my normal blog transition and turn this little jewel of a story into a meaningful life lesson.

As I near this blog’s end, my brain is racing fast to come up with that answer.

But here I go.
Let me give this my best shot.

Life.

It gives us an overwhelming amount to get frustrated, anxious and mad about…every day…if we let it.

We run into inconvenience. Our paths cross with people whose agenda is opposite of our own. We meet insensitivity. We get stuck by obstacles that pop up as we try to move forward in working our “In-Concrete-Must-Do!” lists.

Life consistently gives us a Five Star chance to get pissed at the world…again.

But what does living like that do for us? What “positive” ever happens when we let the inconvenient, unsettling and disrespecting take a sledgehammer to our attitudes and day?

Living in a constant state of mad, frustration or anxiety accomplishes…ZIP.

So this week…this blog is all about…flowing.

Learning to flow and finding our best snicker instead of our best MAD…wow! How good we would be at Life if we learned THAT lesson in school…right?

We would be Dalai Lama-like.

And even if we didn’t rise to the harmonious level of the D.L….at least we’d have the internal power to negotiate life’s varied “spankings” a bit better.

Those spankings that happen to us.
And…well…those that just keep us awake.