It Is the Unwritten Rule That Governs This Game

Coming home from an extended trip is always culture shock. You live for two weeks or 10 days in another environment.

The phone never rings, a car or a cab is always at your service, you’re served all your meals, a sporting event is, so to speak, brought to your front door and you live like royalty for a few days.

But there are drawbacks, things you will want to know about if you’re an infrequent traveler. Here are some of them:

1. Whatever says “Open here” on a package, can’t be.

2. No matter what time you get back to your hotel room, the maid will be there.

3. Room service will close an hour before you need it, and if you order breakfast between 8 and 8:30, it will arrive either at a quarter to 8, when you’re still in the shower, or a quarter after 9, when you’re late for your appointment.

4. No matter what time your breakfast comes, the coffee will be cold.

5. Your connecting flight will leave right on time if your incoming flight is late but will sit on the ground for two hours if you get there right on time.

6. When you sit on the ground, the airline will never give you a satisfactory explanation of the delay, as if it couldn’t possibly be of any interest to you.

7. Your cabdriver in any city will be unable to speak even rudimentary English but if he’s from Iran, he’ll tell you he’s Persian and hope you don’t know modern Iran is ancient Persia.

8. Don’t eat at any buffets or salad bars.

9. Never order the day’s specials at a restaurant unless you like leftovers.

10. Never order anything with a French name on the menu.

11. The air-conditioning will be too hot or too cold, and the only way to open a window will be to throw a chair through it.

12. The doorman will be able to tell right away you’re not important.

13. Always leave a big tip for 60-year-old waitresses, no matter how rotten the food. How would you like to be slinging hash when you’re a grandmother?

14. If you go down in the subway after dark, take a priest.

15. If you go down in the subway before dark, wear a cheap watch.

16. If you go to Central Park at any time, take a gun.

17. Every town you go in, there will be a story about an ax murderer whose conviction has been sent back for retrial on appeal. This will have the heartening effect of letting you know mere muggers have no fear of the law.

18. The TV weatherman will be a clown. He may or may not let you know whether it’s going to rain or not. He’s too busy doing shtick.

19. You will leave at least one item behind in your hotel room, no matter how many times you check closets and backs of doors. Never put anything in a drawer. Leave it in the suitcase if you ever want to see it again.

20. When you get to the airport, your flight will be departing from Gate A-39 or so. I have never in my life gotten on a plane at Gate 1, 2 or 3. I think the airlines keep those gates there as dummies. No one ever really departs from them.

21. The bigger and more spacious the hotel room, the smaller the bathroom.

22. The hotel will persist in furnishing you with shower caps, even though nobody has used one since the Harding administration.

23. Never eat at a restaurant called “Top o’ the Something-or-Other.” Particularly, if it revolves.

24. If you go to Yankee Stadium, take a vehicle you don’t have to park--a cab, limo or, if you’re brave, subway. Keep in mind they just stole the van belonging to the Yankee right fielder.

25. If the headwaiter snoots you, simply tell him airily, “When Mr. Kissinger comes in, please show him to my table immediately.” You may want to suggest you’re expecting former President Nixon, too.

26. Never leave your hotel at night, unless it’s on fire.

27. When they used to say there’s a broken heart for every light on Broadway, they didn’t mean it had been stabbed.

28. You were in less danger in Washington, D.C., when General Lee’s army surrounded it.

29. Be prepared to fly home between 1) a 300-pound guy who coughs; 2) a mother with a baby whose ears hurt; 3) or a guy who brags he’s flying free because his sister sells tickets at an airline counter in Athens, Ga.

30. Trust me that the guy who says he’s a movie producer gets coffee for a movie producer. If that. Always remember a real movie producer wouldn’t want you to know it. He would be afraid you just happened to have this script with you. . . .

31. If you can work the clock-radio for a wake-up call, you probably went to Caltech.

32. Hotels that leave questionnaires as to how they could improve never read them because I have left dozens, telling them to put an H on the hot-water tap, C on the cold and a rubber stopper in the drain instead of those Rube Goldberg chrome contraptions that look like something off the side of a space capsule.

33. Never answer a knock on your door at night.

34. Never call home--you don’t want to know.