The Tyranny of Tickets

You bought a ticket to the show

So, I guess, you’ll have to go

Even if, that night or day,

You’d really rather stay away.

In 1975 I traveled to Mexico with my parents and my girl-friend Jill.  Near the end of our trip we stayed in a resort hotel owned by the Mexican movie star Cantinflas.

That evening I was sick to my stomach and remained in the room because I couldn’t face dinner.  During the night I woke to use the bathroom, but immediately returned to bed.

“What’s the matter?” Jill asked.

“What do you mean?”

“You came back too soon.”

She knew me well and she was right.  “I thought I saw a tarantula climbing out of a large crack in the floor next to the toilet.”

Jill was either braver or more foolhardy than I was.  “I’ll check it out,” she said.  I didn’t ask her not to.

When Jill returned from the bathroom, I hoped she would report that I had been hallucinating.

“Well?”

“I didn’t see a spider, but I did see a big crack in the floor.”

We left the lights on.  Ten minutes later our guest the tarantula (or were we his guests?), entered our bedroom.  We both watched with fascinated horror as this hairy beast crawled across the floor, climbed the wall opposite our bed, and then pulled a Spiderman and walked on the ceiling to a spot directly over our heads.

“He’s going to drop and kill us,” I said.

“Alan, tarantulas don’t kill people.”

“How do you know?  Jill, get him!  Do something!”  Jill was 4 feet 11 inches tall.  Even so, she towered over me as I shrank under the covers.

Ultimately Mr. T crawled back to the wall, down to the floor, and returned to the bathroom.  I did not use the facilities that night, and left the lights on until the sun was up.

The next morning when I saw my parents I said, “I was sick yesterday afternoon and stalked by a tarantula in the middle of the night.  We need to drive to the airport in Mexico City.  I have to go home.  Now.”

“But Alan,” my mother said, “we have four more days, and you’ve paid for reservations at expensive hotels.”

“Mom, enjoy the hotels.  Invite your friends.  I had a terrifying experience last night, and I’m going to sleep in my own bed tonight.  I’m going to Mexico City, then home.  Now.”  And Jill and I were home at 7:30 pm that evening.

Years later I attended an event in Washington, D. C.  A friend and I were both offered a ride back to Los Angeles in a private jet.  I accepted.  My friend said that his airline tickets were nonrefundable, so he chose to return, as scheduled, on a commercial flight.

“I don’t want to waste the money,” he said.

I arrived in Los Angeles two hours earlier than he did, and enjoyed a much more comfortable flight.  With better food.

As my professor son Craig points out, if you think about prepaid reservations or tickets as an option and not as money you will lose, you will make a more rational choice.  Most of us think that not using a ticket or prepaid reservation is a loss (and we do not like to lose).  But I would rather lose my money than my time.  The tickets or the hotel have already been paid for, regardless of whether or not I use them.  In my mind the only question is how I can best spend my next few hours or days.

And as the wise baseball pitcher Satchel Paige once said, “Don’t look back.  Something may be gaining on you.”

Alan