Cheapskates and Stingrays

I was irritated.

 

My family of four had just sat down to a mediocre buffet lunch at the Hilton DoubleTree in Paracas, Peru.  If their defense, we were all stuffed, read: buffet.  The meal had cost me 132 of my hard earned United States dollars, and did not contain any traceable amounts of puffer fish, caviar, or other expensive raw materials.

I decided to sit down in one of the 30-dollar Chinese-made beach chairs which were free.  Well, they were included in the room price, which wasn’t cheap, either.  At least the heavy beach umbrella shaded me from the equatorial sun as I relaxed.  I don’t see how Paris Hilton could expect me to relax after she just pulled such a grand heist.

That’s when I noticed the red button.

Right there on the shaft of the umbrella, there was a clear plastic housing, which contained an oversized red button.  One would have to raise the plastic cover to press it, so I expected that this was actually the nuclear launch button.

Doesn’t that make sense?  If you were going to hide the button that, when pressed, was sure to bring about flaming Armageddon, wouldn’t you hide it in a place that no one would expect?

Admit it, that is the last thing you would expect on the side of a beach umbrella near a stupidly overpriced hotel on the beach in Paracas, Peru.  This is the logic I used, to determine that this must indeed be it.

So, irritated at having been ripped off for lunch, and knowing there was no way the Republicans were going to win the Presidency, I lifted the cover, anxious to end it all in a great blast of radioactive fire.  So long, world.

Instead, there were three smaller buttons: a diagram of a man with a drink tray, something that looked like a credit card, and a large X.  What could this mean?  Could I really apply for a credit card right here on the beach?

This was confusing.  Obviously, it was something placed by the Soviets during the cold war.  The great Game Over button had once again eluded me.  I wanted to push this decoy button, but I had the feeling that the only thing that would vaporize would be more of my cash.  It was a brutal marketing technique to sell substandard margaritas.

My youngest daughter was trying to get my attention, she had spotted something near the water while she was wading.

It turned out to be another small scouting force of other-worldly creatures.  The size of dinner plates, a half dozen stingrays lurked in the shallow water. 

“Do you know where the launch button is?” I asked them.

They didn’t answer.

“Which one of you is in charge?”

Again, silence.  So I picked up a rock and plunked it at one of them.

Lesson learned – never, ever, plunk an invading alien with a rock, especially an armed one. This thing was so fast, it just jerked and moved almost three feet, like a little underwater UFO.  Fortunately, its path was straight forward, so it swam away from me, but I had had enough.  Anything tough enough to kill Steve Irwin was not something I wanted to mess with, and my superior interrogation skills weren’t yielding anything.

I went back to my beach chair to ponder how I would defeat the fascists and the aliens.  Eventually, both would come, and I intended to be ready