Sunday, June 19, 2005
The couple who wouldn't return our calls all spring (while we were getting our boat out of dry dock) took the cake. The first weekend the boat was ready, they showed up at the dock soon after we did, luggage and children in hand, and literally said, "We were just passing through."
Donna Wiesner
Alexandria
Quite some time ago, I was the only woman speaker at a medical symposium in a small Southern college town. The physician who organized the event, a gentleman of the old school, apparently decided it would be inappropriate for me to stay at the hotel with the other speakers and arranged for me to stay at the home of his nurse.
As I was shown to the guest room, my hostess mentioned that one of her three dogs -- the largest -- also slept in the room. The dog was not curled in a cozy corner, but was stretched out full-length on the bed. He responded to my requests, even my orders, to get down on the floor by curling his lip and showing some fangs.
Finally I lay down very carefully on the edge of the bed, alongside the dog. All night, if I moved so much as a toe, I was met with a low and ominous growl.
While sleepless, I survived this gracious hospitality, but from then on, I have preferred to take my chances with two-footed beasts.
Joan Hoover
Chevy Chase
One Sunday afternoon, after showing our houseguest around town, we returned home and found a police car in front of our house. The alarm had gone off, the back door was open and the police were swarming our house, checking every room, closet and shower stall for the potential robber.
Meanwhile, our guest "sorta remembered" going out the back door to use his cell phone, and wondered if perhaps he had not locked the door, enabling it to blow open.
One police officer got into a shouting match with the next-door neighbor about the fact that their dog, contained by an invisible fence, was wildly barking and stalking the cops. Meanwhile, a teenager blithely walking a dog down the street without a leash also incurred a reprimand. An inspection sticker on a neighbor's car was outdated; someone was parked too close to the hydrant. None of this would have occurred if the alarm had not gone off!
Bob and Pat Watson
Washington
We recently had a guest with two small boys visit us from Colorado. We have a young daughter and knew that between the three of them, they would run roughshod over our house. So the day after they arrived, we packed everyone up and took them to a cottage we had rented in Virginia Beach. This was the best experience I ever had with houseguests who have small kids!
Renee Harris
Fort Washington, Md.
We have two dear friends who are a joy to have as houseguests. They came to Maui and to Winchester recently (where we are now living). They always bring a little something that they know we will enjoy. If they want to tour the area, they will go off by themselves after we give them some suggestions. They never knock the town we live in, or the people who live there. They clean up after themselves, and we thoroughly enjoy our time with them.
Debbie Gathercole
Winchester, Va.
After moving to the mountains of West Virginia and adding an in-ground swimming pool, we figured we'd have guests, and we were right. It got to the point where friends would call and ask if we had a room upstairs or down for the weekend of whatever.
Our favorite guests through the years have turned out to be friends who make the three-hour trip down from Philly. After a fun-filled visit, my friend Terri will strip the beds, gather the towels and sweep and mop the floor, and by the time I get up Sunday morning, the house looks like it did when they arrived. As a result of this behavior, I try to do the same thing when I am overnighting at a friend's house.
Pat Tollifson
Shepherdstown, W.Va.
Whenever I stay at a friend's or relative's house, I always do the laundry on my last morning -- the sheets and towels that I used. I take this opportunity to throw my own clothes in the wash, so that when I fly back to D.C. I have a suitcase full of clean clothing. A win-win situation for everyone.
Andy Patterson
Washington
The old college "friend" hadn't thought to telephone me in 20 years, but when she discovered I had a house in Provence near Avignon in the Vaucluse area of France, she invited herself to spend a week with me there. She arrived and phoned me to pick her up at the train station 50 miles from my town.
When we got to my house, she began a nonstop campaign of proselytizing for her evangelical religion and rabid Republican politics. (I'm a Democrat.)
I drove the guest to Avignon for a walk on the loveliest winding street full of elegant shops. Her comment: "Why did we take this long route to the car?"
I drove the guest to the Luberon Valley on the way to Marseille. "Why did we come here? What's there to see in . . . what's this called?"
On the fifth day, I woke early and made coffee. The guest emerged from the guest room whining that I had left the key in the door lock that night and that she had lain awake all night, afraid of an intruder. I told her to pack her valise. I drove her to the train station 50 miles away.
Mary Alice Langenkamp
Malaucene, France
The following were actual questions from guests who stayed two weeks at my house with a number of children:
· "Was that wallpaper torn off the wall before we came?"
· "Thank heavens you had those rubber gloves in the kitchen sink! One of the kids put too much paper in the toilet and I really didn't want to stick my hand down there. I put the gloves back in the sink for you."
· "Did that knickknack shelf in the hall have anything special on it? Because Eric keeps swinging on it, and it finally fell off the wall."
· "Is your computer always that slow? We installed a couple of hundred game packages for the kids, and now it seems rather slow."
· "Was this chair leg [on my grandfather's dining chair] already broken?"
Pat Swain
Fairfax
My wife and I went to the Washington Greyhound station to pick up my mother-in-law on a hot summer day. We saw a large group of sunburned young women crying. They explained that 13 girls from Ireland had taken jobs in Ocean City. They were told they could all stay in one hotel room in Washington very cheaply. They were stuck and didn't know what to do.
We loaded all the luggage and the people into their rental car and our two cars and drove them to our home in Reston. We started cooking spaghetti. Suddenly the girls just took over. We had a wonderful dinner. Then we dragged all the mattresses we could find to the basement. The next morning we all had breakfast and we drove them back to Washington. Some of the girls wrote to us for years, sending cards, etc. The whole experience was great.
Eric Young
Reston
Peace Corps volunteers all over the world are famous for hosting and for being guests. Our desire to travel overwhelms our income, and if a fellow volunteer asks to stay at your place, you can't say no. As a Peace Corps volunteer in Ukraine, I lived in Uzhhorod, a beautiful, formerly Hapsburg and now formerly Soviet town. Almost every week I hosted at least one volunteer and occasionally their Ukrainian friends and colleagues.
One particular night stands out. The day started with one guest leaving in the morning to head back to her village. A few hours later, a couple arrived to stay the night before leaving for Budapest on a 5 a.m. train. At about 4 a.m., as Ben and Erika were sleeping in my living room on my fold-out couch, someone rang my doorbell insistently. It turned out to be Juniper and Kristin, who had just been dropped off by a bus returning to Ukraine from a pilgrimage to the Vatican.
Ben and Erika left to catch their train. Juniper and Kristin fell asleep on the couch that had been vacated only an hour before.
Being a host has its inconveniences. But its rewards are greater than its demands. The almost daily possibility that someone might stop by in need of a place to spend the night made me more flexible and less uptight. It was good for me, and I miss the feeling of anticipating the unexpected.
Elizabeth Roen
Washington
Ways guests made us swoon with gratitude (during the three years we lived in the Netherlands):
· They asked what we missed from home and brought some along.
· Pitched in to the grocery fund, knowing we hosted dozens of guests a year.
· Took us out to dinner once during their stay.
· Surprised us with a bottle of wine or some flowers.
· Went off for full days on their own so we could catch up on our lives.
· Knowing we were short a bed, arrived with a self-inflating air mattress with its own sheets in a handy carry-case, and left it for us as a housewarming present.
· Adjusted to the work/sleep/shower schedule we had to live with.
· Said thanks -- early, often and again when they returned home.
Ruth van Baak Griffioen
Williamsburg