I am aware that there is a large and growing contingent of
Americans keen on fiscal responsibility and espousing polices of limited
foreign intervention so far as to want our participation in the UN curtailed or
eliminated.
To date, I have not considered myself one of their number,
but recent events have caused me to look more favorably on the dissolution of
this international organization which I will show here to be guilty of the
corruption of our youth.
As I walked into my hotel in New York (the hotel where I had
a reservation, not the hotel that I own (in fact, there is no hotel anywhere
that I own with the exception of plastic ones in my monopoly box that equate to
5 houses)), I was taken aback by how crowded it was with young people in
professional attire. As I checked in, I
asked the Sheraton employee whether some event had drawn them all here, or if a
school bus had crashed into a Brooks Brothers.
He replied that the hotel was hosting a Model UN, and these college
students had come from around the world to participate.
He handed me my keycard to a room on the 38th
floor and wished me a pleasant stay. But
as so many have learned before me, New York is no place for wishes to come
true. I dropped my things in my room and
came down for breakfast before going to my meetings in our offices three blocks
away. I returned to the elevator which
had previously taken me to my floor so quickly so I could reclaim the equipment
and documents necessary for my first meeting, one minute, three minutes, five,
now ten. Fifteen minutes go by and no
elevators in any of the 6 banks arrives to help me to my destination. Though I have not yet received the security
footage to verify this theory, the thoughts shared by my fellow waiting
friends, was that these kids had their meetings on the different floors and
this was monopolizing the use of the elevators.
I like to think of myself as a patient person, but I was
going to be seriously late, I gave it five more minutes, which was a
mistake. I should have just taken the
stairs then and I could have moved at a more leisurely pace, but now it was
necessary to assault the stair bank with some haste. Here’s the thing though, there are a lot of
stairs between the first and the 38th floor, and I sweat more than I
did as a younger man. So by the 22nd
floor my legs could not be more furious with me than if I jumped from the
height of that many floors, my shirt is beginning to show spots of damp, and I
am as winded as a clock (huzzah for jokes that work in text, but not speech). But don’t worry, there are only 16 more
flights to go. I make it to the top, an
impossible task achieved, and move to my room where I pass the elevator bank on
this 38th floor and see it has its own crowd of waiting users. So I grab my stuff, and a clean shirt that I
stuff in my coat, and then proceed down those same stairs.
I make it to our offices in time to change shirts and set up
with a minute to spare and sit through a day of meetings set to the tune of my
screaming legs. I return to the hotel
that night, and cannot wait to fall asleep.
But no, the UN has placed an injunction against this, and is enforcing
it by having these kids go in and out of the rooms allowing the doors to slam
as loudly as possible every time, while others hang out in the hallway to
noisily discuss the issues of their august body. After a time I poke my head out into the hall
and ask if there is any limit to the number of times their doors are going to
slam tonight. One girl is polite and
apologetic, a boy down the hall replies that this is New York City. He is nearly told that “No, this is a hotel,
New York City is outside of it and he is welcome to go out there and make as
much noise as he wants.” This goes
unsaid and instead a call is made to the front desk who dramatically forwards
me to security, where the disturbance is reported and the sounds were
eliminated shortly after that long enough for me to sleep.
I awake the next day and nearly collapse when my legs refuse
to carry the weight they are contractually obliged to support. I move like a broken man for the rest of the
day for the first 50 steps every time I get up, until my legs have said their
piece.
Later on that night, the previous night’s nonsense is reoccurring
in my hall, but this time it takes 4 calls to the front desk over the course of
an hour and an half, before any reduction in noise is achieved. It is 3 am, my legs ache, my eyes are red,
and my body pleads for sleep. The UN has
broken me, a man who has done nothing but pay his taxes to a country that funds
it. It has requisitioned resources that
should have been available to me. It has
drafted a child army to destroy my peace.
Socrates was
sentenced to death for corrupting the youth of Athens. I expect the same sentence for the UN.
