Six Words: Shelf, Paint, Transaction, Headline, Confidence, Train
This story is a little long, but I hope it has you on the edge of your seats as you share my adventure. It is a true story. About 43 years ago – and I’m finding it very hard to believe I’m old enough to say that – I had the good fortune to have to be in Paris for a meeting. That was after spending a week in Stockholm. Denise came with me on that trip. I know you’re going to have a hard time feeling sorry for me, but we’ll see what you think as this story unfolds.
We were put up in Paris in a very nice, very old hotel near the Opera House. If you’ve ever seen the musical Phantom of the Opera, this is the opera house where that story takes place. My meeting was at Tour Franklin which is about 5 miles away and almost an hour away by subway. Paris has two levels of subway trains, the regular subway, and the RER which goes longer distances and can be an express. My instructions were to walk from the hotel to the subway station, take the RER, get off at the Tour Franklin exit, and follow the signs to the building. I don’t speak French, but the instructions sounded manageable and I had them written down so I was somewhat confident. I shouldn’t have been.
The subway station near the Opera House is huge! People were bustling about, rushing from the trains to go to work and rushing to the trains to go to work. There were rows of machines that looked like slot machines, but they were actually vending machines that sold the tickets that you need to ride the trains. With some trepidation I approached a machine, stared at it for a while, and eventually managed to figure out how to tell it where I needed to go. It took me a while longer to figure out that it gave me the choice of a first class ticket or a second class ticket. I picked the first class ticket, it told me the fare and waited for me to insert some money. I had several franc coins and smaller coins – remember, this was well before the Euro. But I didn’t have the right change to complete the transaction. I didn’t know if the machine gave change for paper money, and I’m not sure if it took paper money. As I looked around to see if there was anyone to ask, all of those people that had been bustling about had disappeared. It was like being in a Twilight Zone episode.
Behind me in this cavernous, now seemingly almost deserted station were a row of turnstiles that people had been hurrying in and out of only moments before. At the end of the row of turnstiles there was a booth with a woman watching. An unsmiling woman. Nevertheless, it seemed like that could be a place where I might be able to buy a ticket or get change. As I approached the booth the woman began shaking her head “no”. Undaunted, I walked up to the booth anyway and as I started to speak she made it clear that she knew why I was there and that she did not understand English, would never understand English, and was not interested in being helpful. If you’ve been to Paris you know that the chances are that she did understand English or could have been helpful, but since I didn’t speak French she was not going to do either of those things.
So, now with no confidence, I walked back to the slot machine vending machine, told it again where I wanted to go and pushed the 2nd class ticket button. Eureka! I have the correct coins to buy a ticket.
Ticket in hand, I now approach the deserted row of turnstiles, except that I saw one person use one of them just before I got there. He or she did something with their ticket, got through the turnstile and I thought I saw them pickup their ticket after they were through the turnstile. Now it is just me and the turnstiles — and the woman in the booth watching me. And I don’t know what to do with my ticket. The top of the turnstile is like a shiny, unpainted metal shelf. Seeing no place to put my ticket, I try laying it on the shelf and walking through the turnstile. That ticket did an excellent job of laying on the shelf, the turnstile did an excellent job of staying locked, and booth woman did an excellent job of not bursting into laughter while continuing to watch.
Eventually I find a slot on the front of the turnstile, it gobbles up my ticket, lets me through, and spits my second class ticket back out. I find a sign that says RER which leads to a very large elevator that fills up with people that have magically reappeared. We take it down almost to the center of the earth. Moving with the crowd, I get to the edge of the platform and somehow the crowd is all behind me. A train appears. It stops and there is a door right in front of me. Like any experienced American transportation rider, I wait for the door to open. It doesn’t. I wait and the door stays closed. Other doors are open, but not the one in front of me and the army that is standing behind me. Eventually, someone reaches around me and pushes a button, the door opens and we surge forward, my second class ticket in my hand. The door closes, we begin moving and I see the headline that even I can tell says “First class” compartment.