The Embarrassment of Not Being A Sports Fan!

I know, I know it's been a long time....suck it up. Here's something for ya:

Okay, gang listen up here is one of my blonde moments. It was early on in my life so the number would be down in the hundreds or so. But when I was newly married and around 19 years old I lived near  KCI Airport and worked at the Hilton Airport Plaza Inn as their phone operator. Now you might think 'no big deal to answer the telephone' but not so. There was a big electronic machine there, no wires, too new for that, just buttons to push. It had 36 lines into the hotel. And believe me the night Jerry Litton was killed I saw everyone of those little buttons light up. The board looked like a Christmas Tree. However being the first night working alone after training I failed to see the beauty in that. My thoughts were something like, "Oh Shit Fire and Holy Hell!' So you kind of get an idea about how harried an operator can get. You learn to answer talk fast and push a lot of buttons to connect people and keep going. You also deal with the customers within the hotel. The Good, The Bad & The Ugly.


Now you go in about 15 minutes before your shift starts and stay over about that long so you overlap with the previous or next operator so she can get you up to speed on what's going on, etc. Well as you can imagine your wall and board is covered in sticky notes of things to remember. There was a big carousel of little cards in alphabetical order of everyone who was staying at the hotel. Customers calling down ask all kinds of questions and you help them out as best you can etc. or put them in touch with the right people who can.


Me not being a sports person and never having been, I don't keep 'important' information in my head like names of football teams or baseball teams or which is which for that matter. One evening we had two teams as guests in our hotel. One a football team and one baseball. Now I don't remember exactly who they were, but I'm thinking they were the baseball team from St. Louis, Mo and the football team was from California. I'm sure I'm wrong but I'm going to use these two teams to tell the story.

It was a busy, oh so busy, night as you can imagine with these important people that were staying there. Not that I looked at it that way, it was just another night the hotel was full. Meaning my ass was going to be jumping all night long. After many long hours and dealing with people 'after hours' when the bars shut down, I'm beginning to become a little frazzled. One gentleman calls down and says, 'During the big game tomorrow can you tell me who is playing?' Simple question right? Wrong....I'm searching through notes on my board I see Oakland Raiders and St. Louis Cardinals. So I say, 'Yes sir the Oakland Raiders will be playing the St. Louis Cardinals but I don't have the game schedule.' There was a long silence and then amusement in his voice as he valiantly kept from laughing while he said, 'Well now that will be an interesting game!' And I, wanting to be as interesting and nice as possible, in a boring voice (because I could care less about sports) said, 'Oh why is that?' And he says, 'Because honey, one is football and one is baseball!' I was speechless as I stumbled around and finally started laughing and said, 'Is it obvious I'm not into sports?' I was just reading the notes on who the guests are tonight so I just assumed....' He was so amused he came down to the front desk and asked the desk clerk to please get me from the back he'd like to meet me. I think my face was ten different shades of red when I walked out to talk to him.


When I repeated the story to the family the next day they got the biggest laugh out of it and continued, to my chagrin, to tell it for years to come. So I guess it pays to know a little bit about everything, including sports. I know more than I did at 19 but honestly I could still make that mistake today. Only today I'd be saying, "Oh hell I have no idea.' The man was extremely nice, he was a rep for the makers of very expensive sunglasses and he asked for my address and said he wanted very much to send me a pair of some very nice sunglasses for a very special lady. And he made good on his promise too. One day in the mail I received a box with the sunglasses and a tag on them telling me they had ray ban in them, how much UV protection and a lot of other things, plus a very nice note telling me I made his day. By looking at them I could tell they were quite pricey. I wore them for years until they fell apart but they were always the reminder of the blunder I had made, but had turned out pretty good in the end. He ended up making me feel a lot better and I ended up meeting an interesting person.

I guess sometimes it pays to be sports challenged....