The Tourist's Prayer

Heavenly Father,

Look down on us your humble, obedient tourist servants who are doomed to travel this earth taking photographs, mailing postcards, buying souvenirs and walking around in drip-dry underwear.

We beseech you, O Lord, to see that our plane is not hijacked, luggage is not lost and our overweight baggage goes unnoticed.

Give us this day Divine guidance in selection of hotels. We pray that the phones work, and that there is no mail awaiting from our children which would force us to cancel the rest of the trip.

Lead us to good, inexpensive restaurants where the wine is included in the price of the meal. Give us the wisdom to tip correctly in currencies we do not understand.

Make the natives love us for what we are and not what we can contribute to their worldly goods.

Give us the strength to visit museums, the cathedrals, the palaces, and if, perchance, we skip an historic monument to take a nap after lunch, have mercy on us for our flesh is weak.

Dear God, protect our wives from "bargains" they don't need or can't afford. Lead them not into temptation for they know not what they do.

Almighty Father, keep our husbands from looking at foreign women and comparing them to us. Save them from making fools of themselves in nightclubs. Above all, please forgive them their trespasses for they know exactly what they do.

And when the voyage is over, grant us the favor of finding someone who will look at our home movies and listen to our stories, so our lives as tourists will not have been in vain.