There’s no place like home, but this luxury hotel room comes pretty close

I’m in New Orleans, attending the annual conference of the American Society for Tropical Medicine and Hygiene.

My son’s middle-of-the-night visits to our bed have cost me many hours of sleep lately, so I saw this trip as a chance to get some good, uninterrupted shut-eye. Last night I turned my hotel room lights off at 10 PM. I didn’t set the alarm on the clock radio because I didn’t need to be awake at any particular time in the morning.

At 4 AM the clock radio — the one I hadn’t set — turned on. Apparently the previous guest in my room had needed to be up at 4. Argh! Well, I thought, at least it’s still early enough that I should be able to fall sleep again. And I did.

At 4:15 my TV — silent and dark up to this point — began showing a cartoon on the Disney channel. This was really galling. How was I supposed to know that the TV had been programmed to be a time bomb? I angrily turned it off, went to the bathroom, and returned to bed.

At 6:15 the TV came to life again, and so did I, incredulous and bitter. I was now involuntarily watching a program that, at first blush, appeared to be an adaptation of The Flight of the Conchords designed for 3-year-olds. It turned out to be the The Wiggles.

The Wiggles have a wide following among young children and their parents, but at that moment, I would have preferred my son’s screaming.