Lost Key and Found Kindness🗝️💕
It’s the first morning of my vacation in Paris with my 19-year-old son, Emmett, and we decide to go for a run in a nearby park. I grab 20 euros and ask Emmett to put the keys in a little velcro pouch on his sneaker that I brought so we can run hands-free.
After, high on endorphins and vacation joy, I stop into a nearby cafe to buy a coffee and croissant. I feel great. Does life get better than this?
That is when Emmett looks down at and sees that the heavy French keys pushed the velcro open, and the keys are GONE.
No phone, no Apple watch, no contact information. Just less than 10 euros and a half eaten croissant. Panic sets in. I feel like the worst mom in the world that I didn't think of bringing anything with us. We’re locked out of our Airbnb. The only person who can help us is Dominique, the Airbnb caretaker. But how do we reach her?
The famous line, "I have always depended upon the kindness of strangers," from Blanche in the movie Streetcar Named Desire comes to mind. Now what?
Emmett runs back to the park to see if he can find the keys and we say we will rendez-vous back at the apartment in 30 minutes. I stand outside our door in now getting clammy running clothes, feeling pretty foolish.
I look at all the buzzers on the entryway, but in France they only use LAST NAMES for that, so knowing "Dominique" is not helping at all. I finally get into the entryway by going in behind a tenant and knock on the neighbor's door, hoping they might know Dominque. A friendly man answers, and I am so happy in this moment I speak French since his English is kind of 5th grade. Sadly, he has no idea who Dominique is, and we just stand there looking at each other for a bit.
I ask how long he will be home for, tell him I might be back, and he returns to work. I go back down five flights and talk to the building cleaning person who has just arrived, and who suggests I call her boss since she mainly speaks Portuguese. She holds out her phone while I talk to him on speaker and he says he might know a guy... who knows a guy... who could come this afternoon and bust down the door, but he is not sure.
In that scenario, it will cost big money, and we will be homeless with 10 euros and half a croissant until he arrives.
Then it hits me – I might remember my personal email password where Dominique’s info is stored!
I knock again on the neighbor's door and he kindly lets me use his computer. I sit on the stairs next to my croissant crumbs trying different combinations as I hunt and peck on the French keyboard (not the same as US keyboard). On the EIGHTH try, I find the password and get in! Friendly neighbor calls for me on his phone and less than an hour later, Dominique arrives with the spare keys.
I'm mega-relieved, but also shaken.
Have you thought lately about how reliant we are on tech to get anything and everything done? I certainly was thinking a lot about it right then. And I was reminded how much we still need kindness and civility to get by. I was feeling beyond grateful the neighbor saved us from an expensive nightmare waiting around in sweaty running clothes for locksmiths (I brought the neighbor and his wife a nice bottle of wine and chocolates later that day! ).
Flash-forward to this past week's Microsoft outage that sends millions of screens into darkness. I am sure there are now many stories like mine of people who helped out a stranded traveler or lent a computer to someone whose tech was blue screening (is that a verb yet?).
Have you had to rely on the kindness of strangers recently? And don't forget to memorize your key (pun intended) passwords!
Stay brave (and connected to people as much as to tech),
Julia
P.S. After that rough start, we had a fantastic vacation and I think I got all my bad karma out of the way on day one! You can see the highlights reel of the vacay here (must be logged into Instagram), minus the key story. ; )