I was reading a post by Gracepub on her recent hotel horror story, and it reminded me of a motel I stayed at once.

I grew up in Pennsylvania, and my maternal grandparents were out in Oklahoma. When I was very young, my dad usually drove straight through to get there, but stopped at a hotel on the way back. When I was a little older and had friends travel with me, we stopped at a hotel each way.

One such trip, my parents decided to only stop early so my friend and I could use the pool and take a nap. Since it was only for a few hours they picked the cheapest motel with a pool that they could find.

My friend and I had only hung out at the pool for a few minutes, when a policeman came out and told us to clear the pool area. Um, ok. We went back to the room and peeked out through the window.

Cops. A bunch of them. They were standing around a few feet from our room and looking up at a room slightly to the side and on the next floor. We began freaking out, imagining that whoever the cops had cornered would somehow pretend to go along quietly, then break loose and into our room.

It took the cops about 45 minutes to get the guy down and to clear out of the area. We all tried to relax, but after an hour or so gave up, piled into the van and finished the trip. We never found out what all of the fuss was about, but we figured it wasn’t a good situation since there were so many cops, and they all remained on the ground. I remember that later my father had gone out while the cops were out there, and found out that there was a woman with him- who seemed mostly confused.

The end result is that no one in my family has ever stayed at a cheap motel since.