TIMOTHY MICHAEL ROSE

The summer of 2002 was horrific. Business was great and we were 95% - 100% full every night but I had major problems with the staff that year. There was so much damage done to the staff house that summer I think I stopped keeping track at one point. Every single morning I got out of bed and actually dreaded going into the office, it was that bad. Thankfully I haven’t had a summer like that since.

Friday, August 9th, 2002 is a day that forever changed me and everybody that worked at Cleves that year. I was on my way home at about 5:30 pm and I ran into the Corner Store to grab something. It was a beautiful day, warm and sunny without a cloud in the sky. As I walked up to the register to pay for my stuff I saw the 2 trucks from the Minett Fire Department go screaming through the stop sign and head towards Port Carling. I got in my car to head home not knowing that in about 15 seconds my life would be changed forever. When I came around the corner by the ‘Welcome to Minett’ sign, I saw what I can only describe as something that one usually only sees in the movies. There were 2 fire trucks, 3 ambulances, 3 OPP cars and every member of the Minett Volunteer Fire Department about 200 feet in front of me. I got out of my car and walked closer to find out what was going on when I saw 3 of my staff standing on the side of the road. I asked what happened and all I heard was ‘Tim’s really bad.....’. I distinctly remember not hearing another word and I took off running full speed towards the accident and down into the ditch.

Tim Rose a Dining Room Server that summer was riding in a Jeep on a beautiful day heading home to see his family in Waterloo for the weekend. He was with his girlfriend and best friend. When they left Cleves his seatbelt was stuck and he told them to leave and he would get it untangled. Less than 2 minutes later another car coming towards them was driving on their side of the road, the Jeep had to swerve to miss it and they ended up going off the road and down a steep and deep ditch. Tim was thrown from the Jeep. I knew every police officer, fireman and paramedic there that day and they asked for my help to try and get the 2 girls calmed down because they were both very close to going into shock. It is an absolute miracle that neither girl was injured in any way.

When I climbed out of the ditch I was met by one of the OPP officers. We didn’t say it out loud but we both knew that Tim hadn’t survived. The girls obviously didn’t know that and neither did any of the other staff who were there. It was very important that his death not be made known until his family had been notified. He asked me what I needed as he helped me out of the ditch and all I could say was ‘grief counselors at the hotel as soon as possible’. I did my best to try and calm the girls down and they begged me to ride in the ambulance with them but there wasn’t room so I promised to follow close behind.

The next 2 hours were maybe the longest of my life. The girls had been admitted for observation and I was going from room to room to try and comfort them. A physician who was staying at Cleves helped with Tim at the scene and went in the ambulance with him to do what he could. He and I spent our time in the ER just standing with each other, with our heads down holding each other’s hands most of the time. The girls asked me every 10 minutes to go and see how Tim was and to get some sort of update on his condition. Each time I left them I just walked around the corner and did my best just to keep it together. After a few minutes I would come back and tell them they were still working on him. Eventually the ER doctor called me out into the hall and told me they had notified Tim’s parents and that I could now tell the girls he didn’t survive the accident. I distinctly remember telling him as the attending physician it was his job to tell them that. I knew those two amazing girls would resent me for their entire lives if I told them the worst thing they would likely ever hear. Tim’s girlfriend’s parents arrived about 30 seconds later. I went outside, where about 20 Cleves staff had gathered in the parking lot and the doctor took the girls and the parents into the conference room and told them. If I live to be 100 I will never forget hearing the girl’s reaction to the devastating news.

When I got back to Cleves I allowed myself to come totally unglued for a while and collapsed into my Mom’s arms in my office. I remember thinking over and over on the way home from the hospital that there was just too much responsibility involved with dealing with a bunch of kids every summer and for a brief moment decided it was a responsibility that I was unwilling to accept anymore. With the help of a friend, I wrote a letter that was placed on every dining room table at breakfast the next day because our Guests needed to know why every single member of the staff would be hysterical. I had a few Guests come into the office the next day and tell me they would do anything we needed them to do from washing dishes to bar tending, to help us get through it all. We had about 500 guests in the hotel that week and it broke my heart to tell the staff they couldn’t go to the funeral. I had already decided we would have our own Memorial Service for Tim the following Wednesday that his family would attend, which made them feel better about missing his funeral.

The next couple days of my life were totally dedicated to the staff and their emotional needs. They were obviously away from their families and really only had each other to lean on during that horrific time. If you have worked at Cleves before I am sure you can try and imagine what it would have been like if that had happened when you worked here, but believe me, you can’t and there aren’t words to tell you how heart wrenching it was. The morning after he died I went into the dining room at 7:15. I knew I couldn’t help but thought if everybody knew I was just as upset as they were, they might be able to limp through the next few days because we were all trying to cope together. The hardest thing I have ever done in my life was go over to the morning meeting for the children’s counselors that day. I lead everybody out of the Sagamo Centre and we all went and sat outside the colour cube on the ground. I asked the Guests to give us a little bit of privacy while I talked to them, tried to comfort them as best I could and told them about our plans for the Memorial service.

With the help of the Minister from our church up here the Memorial was planned. I invited the volunteer fire department to come to the ceremony and hand yellow roses to everybody after the service. Tim’s entire family came up for it and I remember dreading meeting them. When I introduced myself to his parents they both threw their arms around me and told me how much Tim loved working at Cleves and that they were so glad his last days were spent there surrounded by his friends. His parents still come up twice a year to visit the site and come to the office every time they are here to see me. They are incredible people who will always have a special place in my heart.

After the Memorial service ended, I was on the sundeck talking to Tim’s family and the parents of the girls that were with him in the accident. I could hear a huge commotion off to one side but wasn’t really paying attention until I looked over the side of the sundeck railing and saw at least 50 people swimming. Everybody had jumped off the dock in their clothes. The commotion I heard was them chanting my name. It took me about 30 seconds to run down those stairs, take off my shoes and cannonball off the dock in my suit... then Ted promptly jumped off the dock and did his best to land on me! If you weren’t there you won’t understand this but everybody jumping in the lake was a major turning point. It was at that exact moment that the kids realized life would go on and they were allowed to still have fun for the rest of the summer even if it was with a heavy heart.

The whole event had a very profound effect on everybody who was at Cleves that summer. It forced all of us to bond in a way that quite frankly I never want to experience again. I saw the best in some people, like the Guests who volunteered to help in any way possible, and the Doctor who helped at the scene and ended up at the hospital with me, all of whom ended up becoming great friends of mine. It also brought out the worst in some in people, like the Guest who came into the office to freak out because we cut the kids program short so everybody could attend the memorial (don’t worry, my Dad handled her....). I do have to thank RB for coming with me and being at my side that entire day and night at the hospital. I leaned on you a lot that night but didn't want to put words in your mouth about how you felt during those awful hours we shared. I will always value the support you gave me that day and in the days to follow as I know you had your own team to lead while grieving yourself. As always you did it with class and stoic grace.

Today marks the 8 year anniversary of Tim’s death and like every other year I will go and sit with my Mom on the bench at the Memorial Garden we made in his honour. I will remember the handsome young man I hired, with the amazing smile and great personality who’s brief time at Cleves made such a huge impression on so many people. We were all so much better for knowing him even if it was for such a brief time.

I Don't Like Mondays

Here’s to hallsitting

On a Monday night

When everyone’s partying

Or starting a fight

When everyone’s making out

And fooling around on the bus

When Danny tries his best

To prevent a big fuss

Here’s to hallsitting

One important role

You surf the web in a hall

And get 12 dollars whole

Here’s to wasting a chance

And to missing a night

With the guy that you loved

Who’s with someone else tonight

Here’s to peeing in pants

And crying in cribs

Here’s to staying up late

And to changing bibs

Actually now that we talk

And think about it a bit

A bar night’s no different

Than watching these kids

We act stupid and silly

While we ride in a bus

We need adults to watch out

And supervise us

We need people to care

Someone to love us

Today it’s Jim or Andy

It’s no big deal or fuss

And when it’s all over

And when it’s all done

We need someone to wake us up

And to work we run

So remember my kids

The new crew at Cleve’s

Don’t get too attached

And kiss him when he leaves

Tell him you love him

And you will until noon

When you’ll see someone better

It always ends soon!!!

...AND I OWE IT ALL TO YOU!

I am guilty, I admit it. Every single time I see the movie ‘Dirty Dancing’ listed on my channel guide I watch it. I am sure I have seen it at least 75 times. It never gets old, I never get sick of it and it always makes me smile from start to finish. Anybody who has ever worked at Cleves knows exactly what I am talking about. We have all lived that movie - I just happen to have lived it for 42 years. The similarities between ‘Kellerman’s’ and ‘Cleves’ are uncanny. The properties actually look a lot alike. Both are beside a lake, have a huge Main Hotel and a ‘staff area’ (which we have a hard time keeping the Guests out of - ie Flip Cup Tournament of Summer 2011). Both have great Social Programs for their Guests. Sadly we don’t have time in our program dedicated to trying on wigs but we do have a weekly bocce and shuffleboard tournament and those are the events that get the most Guest turnout!! In ‘Dirty Dancing’ the Dance Instructor made all the women weak in the knees - in my day at Cleves it was the ‘Ski Boys’. Even some of the Guests liked the ‘Ski Boys’... and you know who you are!! :)

Obviously after the dancing, the main theme of that movie revolves around love and friendship. The same can be said for Cleves. If I were to sit down and make a list of how many people met and married after working at Cleves, I am sure there would be at least 50 couples on it, some have even come back to get married here. My parents met here and my sister and brother met their spouses here too. Back in the 70’s it was mandatory for every applicant to send a picture with their resume, something that I find absolutely horrifying!!! One winter my sister was rifling through the applications, saw a picture attached to a resume and suggested that one of the managers should interview him. They have been married for 26 years :)

The whole reason we are all connected comes back to my parents. Their love story is truly epic, one that Hollywood writes movies about. My Dad wanted to be a pharmacist when he was growing up and that was the plan until that fateful day his parent’s brought him up to stay at a resort called Clevelands House in Muskoka. As soon as he stepped foot on the property at the age of 14 he knew he was home. He worked his way up from Bellhop to Manager and one winter he went to Toronto to do interviews to hire for the following summer. My Mom was just finishing Teacher’s College and went with her friend to the interviews on a whim. My Dad interviewed her and when she got back in the car she told her friend that she had just had an interview with ‘the nicest man she had ever met’. That summer (1955) Mom worked as a waitress in the Dining Room. One of the other girls that she worked with came up to her in the kitchen and said ‘You don’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of landing Bob Cornell’. That was absolutely the right thing to say to her. Not only was she horrified that people knew she liked him but she was even more horrified that Dad probably knew too. She did the only thing any sane woman would do. From that day on, she totally ignored him. Apparently and quite frankly, thank God, that drove him nuts. They started dating later that year and got married three years later.

That was 53 years ago and they are still best friends. Each year as their anniversary approaches on October 18th I think of how many lives would be affected if they had never ended up making a life at Cleves. Dad once told me that when he and Mom got married he was in love with two things, her and Clevelands House. I can’t even begin to imagine where we would have grown up, spent our summers, worked or how many amazing people I would not have met if they hadn’t married. So on behalf of everybody who has ever worked here, fallen in love here, had their hearts broken here, met lifelong friends here or vacationed here, THANK YOU! I know I speak for everybody when I say ‘I’ve Had The Time Of My Life’.

B-BYE

I recently posted a new status update on FACEBOOK and in the 3 years I have been addicted to, I mean a member, I have NEVER had such a huge reaction to something I have put up. Over 50 people commented on or ‘liked’ it so it obviously stuck a nerve. I vented about parents calling me for jobs for their kids. It is THE most annoying thing I deal with when I’m hiring. In case you are wondering, parents calling me about something their kid was disciplined for during the summer or informing me she (it’s usually the mommies) doesn’t like the way we are doing something, is the most annoying thing when we are open!! ‘I am sorry Mrs. Smith but because of privacy laws I am not allowed to discuss that with you. Have a great day’ - CLICK :)

I have always thought of myself as a patient person. I know there is no way I could work with the age group I work with and not be patient. I often share stories with my sister about things people say to me and almost every time she follows it with ‘Thank God it is you and not me doing that job’. I love telling her the stories about the parents calling me because the reaction is ALWAYS legendary. The best response she gives me after I tell her one of those ‘interfering parent stories is....’ ‘SANNNNDDDDYYYYY why do you tell me things like that?’ in a very annoyed ascending pitch voice. It almost sounds like she is going to burst into tears - HILARIOUS. Let’s face it the only reason I tell her about those things is purely for the reaction.

The last 18 or so years have absolutely flown by and a couple of years ago one of my friends who I worked with at Cleves called me and asked my how her son should go about applying. My first thought was that I couldn’t possibly hire an 8 year old, my second thought was that it was time to retire, I wasn’t ready to have my friend’s kids working here!! Honestly, her calling me didn’t annoy me at all because I knew her son and he was was a great kid AND I knew that not hiring him could easily mean that some of the stories about the fun we had when we worked here might get out and I couldn’t have that. I told her to have her kid send me a resume and he was hired. I am only human - therefore bribable!!!

I do not have kids of my own so can’t really say how I would parent but I am pretty sure I can tell you how I wouldn’t. I really think doing everything for your kids after a certain age is just setting them up for failure later in life. The kids working in this generation are the ones that get trophies just for showing up. When I was a kid, you had to win to get a trophy and what is wrong with that? I am sure some of the kids that have worked here in the past have thought they should be getting special mention for just showing up for work. I said that to somebody not long ago and she told me she called it ‘Helicopter Parenting’. That is a good one but I think we should take it a step further and call it ‘Submarine Parenting!!’

I could easily sit here and recite phone call after phone call replaying conversations that seem to happen a few times a week this time of year. The following is a fairly accurate re-enactment of an call I got about 7 years ago.

‘Good Morning Sandy Speaking’ ‘Good Morning Sandy, It’s Msssss. Buffy Wallingford an Executive VP here at Scotia McLeod calling.’ (it is important to know that she sounded like she was clenching her teeth when she spoke to me) ‘Hi Buffy what can I do for you (knowing a) calling her by her first name would annoy the crap out of her and b) exactly what I could do for her)’ ‘My 18 year old son Stevie is looking for a summer job and I thought Clevelands House would be the perfect fit for him. He is finishing his last year at Upper Canada College here in the centre of Toronto (duh) and he is heading off to university in the fall. He is a prefect, on the debate team, plays several sports for the school and is a born leader. What sort of position are you able to offer him? I would like him to work in Muskoka for the summer’ Now I am not normally like this but I couldn’t resist..... ‘Buffy, if Stevie is old enough to work at Cleves for the summer and has all of these great qualities, surely he is old enough to call for himself’ ‘Well Sandy I just thought I would call for him as he is in school 9-3 and really doesn’t have the time to call you himself’ ‘I work Monday - Friday 9 - 5 this time of year, I am sure like every other kid who calls me, he can find the time perhaps on lunch or after class...B-BYE’

THE CLEVES LIST OF AWESOME - PART 1

For Christmas this year I got a really fun book called 'The Book of Awesome'. It is a huge list of every day things and events that are so simple but we take for granted. Often they are things we don't notice but we should because they are awesome! That gave me the idea to compose the following....The first Cleves list of Awesome.....and to change it up I did it in rhyme!!

I get in my car in the morning to come to work each day

I pull up in front of the office and it smells great I must say,

From the bakery I can smell today's fantastic baked treat

And also from the kitchen wafts the smell of smoky meat!

AWESOME

The time for lunch in the staff dining room has finally come

There can be times when it's unclear where it comes from,

But you swing open the back door and there to meet ya

Is the coldest milk in the world and amazing homemade pizza!

AWESOME

You pull in front of the office that first day keen and all ready to go

You're about to meet your roomies, none of whom you even know,

Time flashes by so quickly and the best summer ever ends

You are bawling and saying goodbye to you new lifelong friends!

AWESOME

When I turn the light off the last thing that comes to my mind

Is what in eight hours on my desk in the morning I'll find,

The best possible thing ever that could happen to me

Is a boring, one page night report waiting for me to see!

AWESOME

Your staff account has opened and your finally nineteen

You head to the club to jump headfirst into the scene,

The night is so fun, you bought and drank a ton

The next day you account is cut off ooooh that's not so fun!

AWESOME

It's taken a while to learn how to never cause the team harm

You've figured out down to the second, when to set your alarm,

You throw on your uniform and put your hair up in the morning

You arrive in the dr exactly on time, another day with no warning!

AWESOME

Last night was Tuesday and you partied really hard at Cleves

Your body needs the day to go quickly, you even beg and say please,

When suddenly you realize something great, its the BBQ night

Your guests are all going, your name on the 'OFF list' is the best sight!

AWESOME

It's the biggest bar night of the summer and of course work you must

Every one of your friends and roomies went, they just left on the bus,

The Rosseau Room is dead, hardly any Guests came down at all,

So you are let go early and you race to meet your friends for last call!

AWESOME

One of the best things that happens to me year after year

Is when staff come to my office to share stories and talk off my ear,

This is when I'm told all of the gossip, and people should beware

The best stories I've heard are by people in that pink leather chair!

AWESOME

You've worked really hard all summer and can't believe it's almost gone

You've dragged you ass for the last while when on you it does dawn

For the last few months while you were partying, working and romancing

It hits you like a ton of bricks, you just starred in 'Dirty Dancing'!

AWESOME

YOU ARE TRESPASSING AT 5:00 PM

Today in the office we had a meeting about next summer. I just can’t get my head around how quickly the seasons come and go the older I get. In about 6 weeks I will be receiving about 20 resumes a day and until March I actually read (albeit very quickly) all of them and make any notes on the file so when I am picking the kids I want to interview I pay attention. By the time we open I have usually received about 2000 resumes and eventually stop reading them around the middle of March.

Hiring 150+ new staff for every season has advantages and disadvantages. It is great when I manage to hire a great group the previous season and a lot want to come back (for the record 2010 was a great staff year), it means I don’t have to interview as many newbies. There are seasons however, when I have a lot of turnover and the group as a whole isn’t fantastic or some of the staff have started to take working at Cleves for granted and I have to ‘clean house’ in a bunch of departments when hiring for the next year. There isn’t a formula for hiring a great bunch, it is mostly luck. Honestly if they all get along and have a ton of fun together, I have a good year - simple.

My least favourite part of the job is firing people. I hate doing it but somebody has to when it is necessary. My Dad always told me that firing at least one person at the beginning of the season sets a good example for the rest of the summer and I guess he is right but it doesn’t make it any easier.....unless the person I just fired pulled a major boneheaded move, like one kid did in the summer of 2003.

The job description of a children’s counselor starts with the following sentence, ‘The primary responsibility of a children’s counselor is to provide a safe and fun environment for children ranging in age from newborn to teen.....’. After this following incident I actually read this sentence over to see if there was a grey area there and I should change the wording, nope.

We have made a lot of great additions to our kids’ facilities since 1996. One of the things we built was what we call ‘The Colour Cube’. It is a covered play structure that is like the ones you see in some fast food restaurants and it has been an amazing addition, especially on rainy days. Sometimes when counselors don’t have any kids come back to their group after lunch they are given odd jobs to do. One day in the summer of 2003 one of the counselors had the job of replacing the huge ‘zip ties’ on the foam posts of that structure. There was a group of kids in the ‘Colour Cube’ one afternoon playing ‘Cops and Robbers’ and this SECOND YEAR counselor thought it would be funny to tie one of these ‘zip ties’ around one of the kids’ necks. Of course the kid panicked and pulled the end, which made it tighter, started to choke him and the other counselors had to quickly cut it off with scissors. The Director of my kids program at the time (who did that job for several years and was amazing at it) hauled him into her office to give him shit. He couldn’t understand what the big deal was and thought she was over reacting. She called me, told me what happened and we decided to let him sleep on it. If he came in the next day and apologized and was remorseful we would just put him on probation, if he still didn’t see her point of view, we would let him go. Right after the counselors’ morning meeting the next day she called me and told me he was actually pissed off and thought she totally freaked out for no reason. My immediate response was ‘He’s gone, would you like me to do it or would you like to’. Her response was, ‘I’d be happy to do it’.

I sat in my office waiting for the parent call that I knew was coming (those are a subject for an entire posting at a later date). What I didn’t know was that this kid’s family had a cottage pretty close to Cleves so about an hour later the dad and the kid come into my office for ‘the talk’. The dad introduced himself to me and said that he felt his son had been unfairly treated and that he thought I should have given him a second chance. I have a rule that I have always abided by and it might not be the right way to handle things but I will never do it any other way, I NEVER go over my manager’s heads. If they make a decision and want to handle things a certain way, unless I know something else about the story that will change their minds, I will NOT go against what they say. I called the Director, told her the pair were in my office and asked her to come over. The three of us sat in my office for several minutes not saying a word, and waited for her. When she came in I had her sit behind my desk and I sat on the far side of the office and just listened. She was a pro, didn’t waiver, was confident in her decision and said that there was absolutely no way she was going to give him a second chance because he still didn’t get what he did wrong. The Dad then turns to me and tells me he wants me to go over her head and keep him, which I said I would absolutely NOT do. To say that didn’t go over well would be a major understatement!!!

Until that point I don’t think I had said a word. He was getting really pissed off and told me he was a Vice Principal and that he had to give students second chances all of the time. Me saying to him ‘OK you are a Vice Principal, if one of your teachers had done this to a student what would you have done’ PUT HIM OVER THE EDGE. (By the way it is important to note that he might have been 5’7”, I am 5’9”, thank God) We are now all standing because I want them out of there and he gets right in my face and starts screaming at me and I actually thought he was going to take a swing at me, he was that pissed off (for the record I wanted him to, I could have taken him!!). I stepped back, reached for the door and said ‘This meeting is over’ and I followed that with ‘and you have until 5:00 pm to have your kid off the property’. RAGE! He started to leave my office and screams the whole way down the hall ‘YOUR FAMILY SUCKS AND YOU DON’T GIVE A SHIT ABOUT YOUR STAFF.....’. I obviously wasn’t going to dignify that with a response. The Director and I went back into my office, she sat back behind my desk, and I sat across the room from her. There was silence for at least 2 minutes until I said ‘I don’t know about you but I thought that went VERY well!!!’ HYSTERICAL LAUGHTER, meeting adjourned.

THE LAST TANGO IN PARIS

In the last several years I have had a lot of people tell me I should write a book because let’s face it having spent my entire life working in this business I have seen some great and horrific things and have met a lot of interesting characters. I decided to start writing a blog to help me recall some of the stories that are worthy of telling. The first thing I did before I actually started writing wasto make a list of topics I thought people would be interested in hearing about or that I thought were hilarious. Never in all that time did I ever think I would feel compelled to write about something or somebody that doesn't even have a Cleves connection.

Let’s get one thing straight, I think Paris Hilton is a total skank / ditch pig and a spoiled little bitch. I know I am not alone in my thoughts on this. I still cannot understand why this person is famous. She can’t act (unless she is in a sex tape), she can’t sing (without auto tune) and she is as dumb as a bag of hammers. I am certain if her head were held under water bubbles would rise to the surface. Please don’t misunderstand me, I am absolutely not comparing the Hiltons to the Cornells at all. We owned 1 hotel in the smallest town in the world and they own several in the most glamorous places around the globe. It has however got me thinking as to why she is such a disaster and for me it boils down to her childhood and parents. Obviously I can’t say that without discussing my own childhood or parents, both of which were amazing.

The differences are blatantly obvious. She grew up in Beverly Hills being waited on hand and foot every moment of her life. I grew up in Minett and was waited on at the family dinner table in the Dining Room in the summer to which I have already told you wasn’t exactly enjoyable for me. Getting dressed up every night just about killed me. She likely spent her childhood being raised by nannies, rarely saw her parents and spent her days lying by the family pool having some poor servant wait on her hand and foot or shopping on Rodeo Drive. After the age of 9 I spent my days running around the resort spending every minute with PS skateboarding, swimming in the lake, riding my bike and after the age of 11, working. At 11 I rented boats half a day, 6 days a week. It wasn’t exactly difficult and I spent most of my time swimming in the lake, but it was a job. After that I did everything from nursery, front desk, reservations and bar. Along the way I have done my share of housekeeping and dishwashing. Let’s not forget the black out of 2003 when I was in the kitchen for 6 straight meals hand washing cutlery for 500 people. The second the power came back on I walked into Dad’s office and had a serious discussion about generators and how badly we needed one to run the kitchen. I doubt Paris had a job until she made that sex tape.

A lot of the blame for what an ass she is has to be put on her parents. I can’t imagine she had a curfew as a teenager and until I was about 17 I distinctly remember looking at my watch every 30 seconds willing the second hand to slow down as 11:00 pm approached. I had the exact time it took me to run from the club up to the house, down to the second. My dad would be sitting in the front living room window waiting for me, having a smoke (Cameo menthol - yuk) looking at his own watch as I flew in the door every night at 10:59:59. I knew if I was late I would be grounded which would mean I wouldn’t be allowed to go to the club at all for a period of time. Let’s face it Cleves isn’t exactly a place where you want your kid wandering in and out of the staff house in their early teens at night which makes me think that Paris spent her teenage years living any way she pleased with absolutely no rules or even the pressure to work. I also highly doubt that unlike me, she got excited when she and her friends ran up to the phone booth to score loose change, crawled under the pop machine on the dock where we made a mini fortune, or got to roam around the woods beside the golf course looking for golf balls, so excited to yell ‘FOUND ONE’ every time one appeared!!!

Does Paris live a glamorous life? Absolutely. Would I trade places with her? ABSOLUTELY NOT!! I had just as much fun at Cleves growing up. Believe me I cranked it up A LOT and there are lots of stories that will always remain in the vault but I think my parents did a brilliant job of finding a way to raise 3 kids in an environment like that who never got into any MAJOR trouble. Paris used the ‘the cocaine found in my purse wasn’t mine’ defense not long ago...really? I had to fire a kid this spring for drinking underage in the Club and she tried to use the ‘I didn’t actually buy myself the drink I was enjoying, somebody gave it to me’ defense. What I should have said to her was ‘and I am sure they water boarded you with it and that’s how you ended up having to drink it!’

My advice to Paris is simple; get a grip, get a real job, and put your big girl pants on - scratch that - put some underwear on. Didn’t your mother give you the time honored advice ‘don’t leave the house without clean underwear on or without $20.00 in your pocket?’ Your way is obviously not working and you are making the rest of the ‘Hotel Brats’ look bad!!