Guest Services

We were getting ready to welcome a guest in our home last week. It was something that we had been looking forward to for a long time; someone that we look up to and admire was going to be visiting our house.

We put out the very best that we had to offer: tray on the guest bed, water, toiletries and even chocolate on the pillow. We knew what our guest liked for breakfast, so we prepared all of the favorites. We wanted our guest to know how very welcome she was.

We had told the neighbors that our guest was going to be visiting, and how much we were looking forward to it. You see, our guest had promised to sing a few songs for us while she was with us and had told us it would be OK for the neighbors to listen in. So now EVERYONE was getting excited! This was going to be a visit to remember! It was getting larger by the moment.

Our friends were telling THEIR friends, and folks from all over were calling to ask what time "the performance" (that's what it had become) was going to happen. This could turn out to be THE neighborhood event of the year! It's nice to have friends come to visit.

And then the unthinkable happened! Our guest had to cancel. Or better put, our guest decided to choose what was behind Door #2. (Didn't Monte always look like he had something up his sleeve?)

It seems they got a better offer from another friend. Some folks who live in a larger city invited our guest to visit with them instead of us. We were disappointed, to say the least. All of our neighbors showed up at the announced time, and we had to explain that there would be no "performance."

It was not a happy moment.

Folks started asking us all sorts of questions: "Didn't your friend know what it meant to live up to a promise?" "Wasn't someone's word good for anything anymore?" "Are they REALLY your friend? Or did you just make it up?"

It was really embarrassing.

One by one, the neighbors began to wander off, disillusioned and disappointed. I offered to yodel or do my infamous hula-hoop spaghetti shuffle, but they weren't interested. They wanted what I had promised to them. And I had not delivered. My guest had not shown up. Nothing else that I could offer them would suffice.

Isn't it something when someone ELSE lets you down, and all of a sudden it's YOUR fault? That is a tough thing to swallow. And even tougher to overcome. I sure hope that the neighbors will believe me the NEXT time I have a guest coming to visit. It's almost tempting to not be open to visitors in the future, at all. Or at least not tell folks about their expected arrival in advance. At least that way, I wouldn't end up with poached egg on my face.

By the way, anybody want some Danish, a muffin, some fruit or orange juice? We've got an awful lot of breakfast food that's going to go uneaten!

Honey, have you seen my hula-hoop?

Billy