Citizen Joyce

I don’t know what you’ve left behind in your hotel room (the other sock? Bamboo papers? Dental floss?) but how about leaving an entire drawerful of tops, bathing suits, and lingerie, which is what I did. And then, amazingly, after a few weeks and a few different people handling all this stuff, getting it FedExed to my door by the Good Samaritan whom I shall refer to as Citizen Joyce, a woman who lives in a remote town in Missouri. Well maybe it’s not remote, but it’s Missouri, you know? Now that I’ve stopped reading the newspapers and stopped listening to NPR or, more importantly, the morning BBC broadcasts, I can pretend that the world east of NYC is inhabited only by Good Samaritans such as Joyce.

This is what happened. After having stayed at the aforementioned B&B, Cascadasdemerida, in Merida, (see my photos, above) the capital of Yucatan, Mexico (a great B&B with fabulous breakfasts) I received an email from Ellyne Basto, the proprietress, telling me that I left my things there. She said she would wash them and then see what she could do about getting them back to me. Wow. Luckily for me, everything was clean, thank god, so at least I didn’t have to worry about her messing around with my dirty laundry. Ellyne did manage to bring my things to a hotel where she knew a couple that was going back to the States was staying. She handed it over to some guy there, who said he would give it to this couple (Citizen Joyce and her husband). It was hoped that Joyce would send it to me upon her return to Missouri.

For a while there, no one really knew if in fact the couple actually had my things and it wasn’t so easy to contact her. But, in fact she did send it to me, at a cost to her of $10.70. After thanking her profusely in an email, I told her that I had put a check in the mail to her to cover her costs. She emailed back, asking me not to send her a check, that she would be insulted if I did, and that “so many people were nice to us on our trip and I just want to pay in forward”. I guess that’s how they say it in Missouri. (Or maybe it’s Missour-ah). Any way that you say it, it works for me.