But don't let it linger, because it will drive you mad.

"There is no room at the inn."

I'd been hearing that all day. From inn to inn as we inched our way down the crowded Gotica area of Barcelona. I was surprised, because I knew this area as the tourist section with hostels, hotels catering to a crowd with limit currency.

And Spain's overall economy being what it was, I was confused. If Chester Cheeto was in "Less than Zero" which character would he have played? This ran through my mind all day, and at every stop, I'd ring the bell, be allowed to enter and first ask the inns keep this very question.

Sometimes I'd deliver the line while holding a large bag of cheetos against my chest as display, with the other hand stretched out, a single cheese snack club held between my fingers ready to bop the peoples on their noses.

In one case, the inns keep rose and bellowed, "There is no room at the inn!" Mostly they say it quietly, so I was taken aback by the venomous retort from said inns keep.

"Keep it down," I said in Castilian (it even kept the identical rhyme in translation). "People are sleeping." I went in behind his desk, helped myself to the clean white towels, returned to my side by the entrance, faced in, turned up my nose, dropped the towels and ran up the stairs giggling. He gave chase, caught me in the corner. My friends were left wondering down the stairs, probably going through the shampoos. But up on the third floor I was alone with the burly man inching closer.

I brandished another cheeto, held it up high in the air. "Don't get any closer!" But he kept coming and a thought occurred to me that I'd never actually used one of these outside of the practice range. Hell, I'd never even eaten one outside of elementary school systems of the Northwest, where I was packed and shipped every year to follow my father in his base stations through a failed military career.

No. I was in trouble and that was a fact. But it was do or die and I didn't ask why when the inns keep was in reach. I just faked left and then dove headlong into him, cheeto swinging, felling its victim.

Have you ever seen the neon orange of a cheeto covered in blood? Imagine that. But don't let it linger, because it will drive you mad.