Part of the gig of operating a motel is that you learn to judge those that need extended verbal affirmation and those that simply wish to do the business with minimum human contact. We tend to amend our patter to suit.
One of our regular corporate guests has always been a man of few words. Over many months of retuning to stay with us, his communication has been limited to grunts and hand gestures. We respect that he is a matter-of-fact sort of a guy, however for a bit of fun, it has been a personal challenge to try and break the ice.
After seemingly ignoring our usual patter of pleasantries at check-out this morning our man of few words glanced at the newspapers on our counter and paused. He then did something that he has never done before - he engaged in conversation.
The front page of the newspaper featured the death of Sir Howard Morrison and our guest spoke eloquently about his sadness of his passing and reminisced about some of the happy memories he had over the different eras of Sir Howard's music.
I nodded and smiled in all the right places. At last we had a break-through!
In closing our guest said in a matter-of-fact way, "at least Howard Morrison lived a good and long life, unlike my son that passed away at age 23". He half smiled and left.
My son is coming home from boarding school tonight. I'm gonna enjoy the next few weeks over the school holidays.
