Location: Embassy Suites Hotel, San Diego ❖ 10th Floor
My wife and I get in the elevator and almost immediately half a dozen bubbly young girls stream in and line the glass walls. One of them holds the door and yells down the hallway, “Kiera, are you coming?... Are you coming or not?!”
“I’m coming!” is the reply and, seconds later, two more girls pop in from the hallway.
As the elevator descends, one of the girls looks down and, grief-stricken, blurts out, “I forgot my socks! I’ve got to go back to 10.” We didn’t yet comprehend why she was so distraught at this discovery.
“Hit the MZ button.” “We’re going to MZ,” one of the girls explains. And, lacking a “the,” we sense that she has no idea what those letters actually mean.
“What’s on MZ?” my wife asks one of them.
“It’s the most slipperiest floor ever!” the girl responds.
No socks. Slippery floor. Now it all made sense.
When we returned to the hotel later that day, we hit the MZ button in the elevator and stopped on the mezzanine level to see if we could discover why it was so magical for those girls. I expected to find some slick, polished marble or ceramic tile section of floor. But we walked the entire thing and it was all carpet. It was, however, smoother carpet than the other, more trafficked floors. The reality was not as thrilling as the imagined destination but, for those girls, killing time between sessions of their cheerleading competition, it was the place to be. But only if you remembered to wear socks.
We went next door to a cool beach-themed shop and I scored some crazy tie-dyed, striped socks (above) that I had passed on earlier because they were pricey and a little outside of my comfort zone. But after discovering MZ, I had to have them. And, well, it’s now gotten worse, or better depending on how you look at it. This is what came in the mail yesterday:
Now, when faced with a rough day, instead of saying, “Go to your happy place,” I now say “Go to MZ.” And I remember my socks.
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