Lost Elephants

Well, I called the hotel where I thought I left my motivation. They’re claiming it’s not there. Riiight. Someone who works there has obviously kept it and is using it. It’s fine. I can get new motivation. I think I have some around here somewhere. Maybe under this pile of unread magazines…

Speaking of forgetting things in hotels, have you ever left anything behind? Once, when we were moving from Georgia to California, Amelia Earhart’s Cabbage Patch Kid, Molly, got left in a hotel. The hotel gladly sent it to us, except, since we were between residences, we had to have it mailed to my in-laws and tell Amelia Earhart that Molly was having a super fun vacation at Nana and Papa’s and would come home once we had a house. Then, we did it again. Ugh. This time we left Arthur Dent’s lovey, Rocco the Elephant
in a hotel in New Delhi. The problem with this little genius move was that it was on day 3 of a 14 day adventure in India, and mailing it to our house was going to require international shipping. Drat. Well, since it would cost more to ship Rocco than to buy a new one, we decided to imagine from now on that Rocco is living happily with some Indian child who doesn’t have any other toys. Plus, Arthur Dent was going to spend this trip sleeping in a hotel bed with at least two other family members at all times, so he probably wouldn’t even notice Rocco’s absence.

The miracle of modern e-commerce is that, using wireless internet and my Kindle Fire and this amazing thing called Amazon Prime, we had Rocco II heading for Sri Lanka the very next day. Our mail is actually sent to a US address where it gets injected, inspected, detected, infected, neglected and selected and finally routed here. (Aside- The International Man of Intrigue, Amelia Earhart, and I actually heard Arlo Guthrie perform Alice's Restaurant! Legend - wait for it -dary!) Mail takes a week or two to arrive from the states. We figured Rocco II would be waiting for us when we got back to Colombo. We didn’t figure that last week’s mail would be held up somewhere in the Middle East. Grr again. Lucky for us, the little dude is more attached to his pacifier, or “beebee” than to Rocco.

Rocco II finally arrived Monday, and Arthur Dent didn’t seem too phased to see him, until bedtime, at which point he snuggled in with Rocco II in his arms and let out a mighty sigh. Aaah, a boy and his elephant, together again! (Well, kind of. I’m not telling Arthur Dent that Rocco II isn’t Rocco. I’m hoping you’ll keep my secret, Fellow Adventurers!)