We’ve all heard that when you have to make a decision, you should listen to your inner voice.
But I have a question.
What if you disagree with your inner voice?
For example, here’s what happened to me. I went to Boston to see daughter Francesca in a show that ran for three weekends. I decided to stay for the duration because it was easier than driving back and forth, and happily for me, as a writer, I can work anywhere.
Especially where there’s room service.
I write great whenever room service is around. I love room service like Hemingway loved Scotch. I think the course of American letters would have been completely different if Fitzgerald had known about In-Room Dining. I bet Faulkner would have gone with the mustard salmon with pommes frites. He might have written As I Lay Eating, instead.
Anyway, I stayed in a hotel and even brought my dog Ruby, who once killed my finger. If I left her at home, I was afraid she’d kill something else, namely one of the other dogs. Besides, it’s fun to have a dog in a hotel.
She likes room service, too.
For the last weekend of the show, mother and brother flew up from Miami and we had a great time. Afterwards, we were scheduled to drive home together on Sunday, but when we woke up that morning, it was snowing like crazy. Almost a foot of snow had already fallen, and freezing rain, hail, and other pointy things poured from the sky. Only snow plows, salt trucks, and the proverbial emergency vehicles were on the roads. The governor issued the usual travel advisory, which boiled down to:
Are you nuts?
So mother, brother, daughter, and I convened in a hotel room to make a decision about whether to stay or go. Mother said, “It’s cockamamie to drive in this weather.”
Brother said, “Let’s stay an extra day and go home Monday.”
Daughter said, “I vote for Monday, too.”
My inner voice agreed with all of them. It said, It’s only common sense to stay another day. Plus, I can order that roast chicken I like. They’d cook it for me and bring it on a tray with a rose, then take away the dirty dishes, like I’m a baby. A little writer baby.
But I disagreed with my inner voice. A contrary voice was coming out of me, and I think it was my outer voice. It said, I’ve been in this hotel for almost three weeks. It’s costing me a fortune. I finished my book. I’m out of underwear and Iams. I want to go home, and the governor is not the boss of me.
So I said, “I have four-wheel drive. Let’s rock.”
We left at noon in a blizzard, and we were the only car on the Massachusetts Turnpike. At least I think we were, but I couldn’t see much through the sleet frozen on the windshield, in patches shaped like major continents. I couldn’t clear the windshield because ice clung to the wipers, transforming them into twin Popsicles. I blasted the defrost on MAX, but the effect was MIN, except that windows steamed up and the interior temperature hovered at greenhouse effect.
I couldn’t drive above 45 mph because once I hit 50, we fishtailed, which was when I realized that although I had a will in place, all of my beneficiaries were in the car. So if we all died driving home, my hard-earned money would go to the state, in which case the governor would be the boss of me.
We stopped four times on the way, both for dogs and people, and the lowest moment occurred at a “canteen” in Connecticut, when we got out and saw that the car was completely encased in a thin layer of ice, as if it had grown an impervious shell, like the Batmobile.
That is, if the Batmobile contained The Flying Scottolines and a corgi with behavioral problems.
We finally got home at nine o’clock that night. Bottom line, a trip that usually took six hours took three extra. And the whole way, I was hearing voices. It was my Inner Voice yelling at my Outer Voice.
But amazingly, when we got home, neither mother, brother, daughter, or dog said I-told-you-so.
Which is why they’re the beneficiaries.