Only in Vegas

I think my Vegas experience (outside the business aspects) is summed up, so far, by the following experience that happened as I was checking in at about 1:30 this morning:

My colleague and I leave the check-in counter and begin the long trek toward the elevators (which, as in any good Vegas hotel, takes us right through the middle of the casino). Even after the long day, I am taken aback to see in the middle of our path two young women—girls, really—wearing fishnet stockings, tiny leather bikini bottoms … and honestly I don’t know what else, because I was too busy turning to my colleague and saying, “Only in Vegas…”

Are you lookin’ at my daughter???” comes a female voice to my right. I turn and there’s a couple, probably not old enough to be the girls’s parents (but you never know). Actually the parents? Pulling my leg? Hard to tell. Playing safe, I reply, “Excuse me?”

“You lookin’ at my daughter?” comes the reply. She’s making eye contact and not smiling. The last thing I want to do is get a beat-down before the conference starts, in the lobby of the most expensive hotel in Vegas.

“Ma’am,” I reply, “I’m trying awfully hard not to.” And we keep on walking for the elevator.

If my luck were any worse, or if I were a Wil Wheaton calibre storyteller, the offended mother would have attacked me there. Fortunately I moved on without incident and the rest of the day went OK.