Losing Perspective

As I mentioned last week, Bonnie and I recently cruised the Mexican Riviera. One purpose of the trip was so that Bonnie could rest. She had a fall not so long ago, straining some muscles and tendons in her back, and the doctors have said the best thing for her is to rest and to take Motrin for the pain — preferably the kind in gel caps which dissolve at a slower rate.

While we were in Mazatlán, the second of our two ports of call, on our way back to the ship Bonnie remembered that she was a little low on Motrin. No problem. They had a pharmacy in the port area. Prices would probably be a little higher than in downtown Mazatlán, and a little lower than on the ship.

The kind she wanted cost $3 and were packaged in a box about the size of a pack of cigarettes. We paid, placed her medicine in a black bag, and left.

Five minutes later, while still in the port area, Bonnie asked, “Where’s my Motrin?” It was gone. She hadn’t given it to me, but I still checked all my pockets and my backpack anyway, just in case. It was nowhere around.

Bonnie was really upset. I tried to calm her by reminding her it was only $3 and we could easily go back and buy another package. “This is mildly unfortunate,” I reminded her, “but it’s not a big deal. If you ran out of Motrin in the middle of the night and needed it, a visit to the casino doctor at that hour might cost $100 and it would have been worth it! An extra few dollars now isn’t worth ruining an otherwise nice vacation.”

I didn’t remind her that the stress from worrying wouldn’t help her healing process anyway. Had I mentioned this to Bonnie at that particular moment, she would have likely gotten even more upset — and this time her anger might have been directed at me.

So we went back and bought another pack. As we left the pharmacy, Bonnie wanted to retrace her steps one more time seeing if we could find the black bag.

As it happened, one of the security guards on the way back to the ship asked what she was looking for and sure enough, he had her pills and gave them to her. I tried to tip him a dollar and he waved it off.

This was quite remarkable to us. From about 2010 to 2013, cruise ships refused to stop at this city because of the crimes against tourists. For the health of the city, you now see lots and lots of armed military guards all over the city. We had taken the bare minimum of cash with us and left watches and jewelry locked up on the ship. We were not expecting to run into a Good Samaritan — and were pleasantly surprised when we did.

Now the issue was what to do with the extra box of medicine? I didn’t know the policy of the pharmacy about returns, but I suggested keeping it. “You’ll use it eventually,” I told her, “and even if you can get it back home for maybe $1.50 when you buy in quantity, it’s not worth the hassle of trying to talk them into something that may or may not be against their policy.”

Something else happened that could be called similar, but I see a difference. Our cruise was courtesy of Penn National — or more specifically M Resort. Included on our package was $50 credit for food or beverage only (thank you very much!)

Early in the cruise I went to the front desk and asked them a hypothetical. If I charged a $40 bottle of wine, with a forced 18% gratuity of $7.20 and that was my only charge, would the voucher pick up $40 and I was responsible for the gratuity, or would the voucher pick up the whole $47.20? I could live with it either way but I’ve had enough experience with different ways casinos handle such things that I wanted to check up front. I was told the voucher would cover the entire $47.20.

Armed with this information, I ordered a $42 bottle of wine, which comes out to $49.56 with gratuity. (Okay. It was a $15 bottle of wine at Lee’s Discount Liquor Store, but cruise ship prices are inflated a bit.) When our final bill was delivered to our stateroom at 4:00 a.m. on the morning of departure, the $49.56 charge was still there. So I went to the front desk with my voucher and everything was handled eventually, although it did require speaking to two different people. Had I not gone to the desk, who knows if the charge would have come off?

Bonnie asked me what the difference was between me going to the front desk and “fighting” for the $49.56 and her being upset about the “lost” $3 worth of Motrin?

To me the difference was that I wasn’t upset or out of control. It was a simple matter of checking — and then doing whatever was appropriate. I intentionally set my alarm a half hour early on the last day to leave time for this “if necessary.” (There were two other items I wanted to verify on the bill — but they were done appropriately.) I didn’t see this as a major problem. Just a matter of something that needed to be tended to.

Let’s switch to gambling. We all have imperfect things happen to us from time to time. Maybe we accidentally played a few hands on a worse pay schedule than we intended to. Maybe all four of the “good machines” we thought were best to play were full and we needed to play second-best or go home. Maybe the machine ran out of tickets just as we got there and we had to “waste” five minutes until it was fixed. Whatever.

There are people who can shrug that off and there are others who get really upset. Years ago, we had an expression, “Don’t sweat the small sh*t,” although the folks who used that expression often had marijuana to help them through it. (Bonnie has never used marijuana in her life and hasn’t thought it a good idea for anyone else to use it either.  Recently, however, she has considered trying the medical variety for her back pain. I’m always a bit amused when people who say “never” end up in a personal circumstance that turns that “never” into “maybe.” It’s more amusing, of course, when it happens to somebody else rather than ourselves.)

Getting angry at little things causes undue stress, including high blood pressure and various other real medical problems. Finding ways to not do that makes your life longer and more pleasant. Exercise helps. Yoga, meditation, and other techniques work. For some, religion and/or some type of self-help process also is useful.

In the casino — and out.