This is pretty embarrassing to admit honestly, and whilst it didn’t involve me getting both of my arms stuck in a pair of vending machines by holding on to cans inside, it was equally stupid and therefore worth writing about!
Last week, I travelled with my parents to the Burgundy region of France for my cousin’s wedding held at the beautiful Château De Varennes, which took place over three days. Afterwards, rather than flying straight back home, we decided to continue on south and visit the stunning city of Annecy, which is justifiably nicknamed the “Venice of the Alps” because of its alpine lake and winding canals that run through the old town. Later on in the day, we found a nice restaurant near the centre of Annecy to have dinner, and it was here that the embarrassing incident took place. We sat at a table shaded underneath the awning outside of the restaurant, as it was 35°C that day. I had to go to the toilet, so I went into the restaurant and into the door labelled “Hommes”. Inside, there was one toilet behind a door and a small sink area, so into the toilet I went and closed the door behind me. Two things I noticed straight away. The first was that the toilet area was ridiculously small, which would be intolerable for any body size let alone a 6″2 male! The second was the overwhelmingly strong and unpleasant smell of citrus air freshener, made worse by the small space that it occupied.
After relieving myself, I flushed the toilet and went to open the door, but there was a problem. The door would not open. I tried again, and again, but the door would not budge. It was at this point that panic started to set in. I was trapped in a small box, choking on lemon fumes, with no means of escape. I had also left my phone on the table outside, so I had no way of calling my parents to come and rescue me! I started banging on the door, yelling at the top of my lungs for help in both English and French, and even resorting to using my body weight to try and force the door open. All efforts were useless. The staff in the restaurant would never hear me and the door was not budging. I started to sweat profusely, and my Garmin watch thought I was starting to run a marathon in zone 5. This was my nightmare come true!
But then came the Homer Simpson vending machine moment. In the classic episode of The Simpsons “Marge on the Lam”, Homer gets both of his arms stuck in a pair of vending machines after trying to retrieve cans of soda from them. The supposedly more intelligent repair man says to Homer that there is no other alternative but to saw his arms off to free him, and as he moves in with a circular saw, another man asks Homer “are you just holding on to the cans?”. If that man was outside the toilet door when I was busy having a full blown panic attack, he would have calmly asked me “have you tried sliding the door open?” Yes, that’s right, the door was a slide open door and not a push open door, which I managed to figure out a few minutes afterwards. The utter embarrassment I felt walking through the restaurant past the waiting staff to the table outside!
There are two learnings that I took away from this horrible experience that was completely of my own making. The first is that I need to calm down and be more present in the world around me. If I had actually paid attention to the fact that it was a sliding door, which I had no excuse not to notice given that I closed it that way after entering the toilet, then I could have avoided this scenario playing out the way it did. The second is that if you want to be truly free, you need to let go of fear. Not an easy thing to do when fear grabs a hold of your biological steering wheel, but control can be wrestled back with calmness and clarity of thought.
The food was lovely though.