ZACH’S HARROWING, PARISIAN ADVENTURE

After a seven hour flight to Paris, we arrive at Charles de Gaulle airport at around 7:00 in the morning. Groggily we proceed through customs with our luggage and take a long walk to the suburban train terminal that takes us into Paris. This train (the RER) becomes a regular Metro within the boundaries of Paris, but because of the suburban part, it requires the passenger to keep his ticket for exiting the station. The train turns out to be an express (unusual, but probably because it’s rush hour) so the first stop is in Paris, and the second stop is where we get off to be close to our apartment, Chatelet-Les Halles.

During the train ride, I give slips of paper to Gary and Zach with our apartment address and the two numerical codes to get into the building and up the elevator.

When we come to our stop, Gary and I pull our luggage onto the platform, assuming Zach is right behind us. Zach however, has trouble with his duffle-bag, and then a woman with a baby carriage slows him up, so the rush hour crowd pushes in and stops him from exiting before the Metro doors slam shut. He cries out, “Dad!!” but we don’t hear him. So when Gary and I look around for him, after the train departs, he’s not on the platform. Yikes!

Gary, being a careful father, has kept Zach’s passport, train ticket, and has all the euros. Zach is without euros, identification, or the damn ticket to exit the station.

After realizing that Zach didn’t just wander off somewhere (as is his wont), Gary and I assume that he will get off at the next station and take the next train back. But what we don’t realize is that this station is 5 train tracks wide and the return Metro is way on the other side of the station. So when Zach does take the next train back, he is 6 platforms away, and we can’t see him and he can’t see us.

Gary stays on the platform hoping Zach will return, while I roam around up on the next level of the huge station looking for him. But after a half an hour, we decide that he’s intelligent enough to use the address paper I gave him to find the apartment himself, so we should go there and wait for him to find it. On the way out, we talk to three gendarmes (one who speaks a little English) and we report a missing son – they ask his age (worried it’s a small child) and we tell them “19”. And off we go to the apartment to anxiously wait.

In the meantime, Zach has been wandering around the station, looking for us. He encounters the same three cops and after much broken French and English, they look at him and say “19”, much to Zach’s bewilderment. They are very helpful and friendly (as we found most Parisians to be), and after Zach makes them understand that he can’t get out of the station without a ticket, they escort him out. They take him to a local police station, and then point him toward rue Montmartre, and the address he has on his slip of paper.

When Gary and I reach our place, Gary is not able to just sit and wait (and who can blame him), so he gets directions to a police station (ironically not the one Zach has been taken to) to officially report the incident. These friendly policemen proceed, after much language confusion, to take Gary around the neighborhood in one of those tiny European police cars, with the siren going “beep-boop-beep-boop”, stopping all teenage boys to see if they are Zach.

The story winds down now, as Zach does indeed arrive at our apartment. I tell him that his father is at the police station looking for him, so off he goes (to the wrong station house), then his father returns to the apartment with a policeman, to hear that Zach is out looking for him. Gary promptly hugs the big, French policeman, saying “My Hero”. When Zach comes back, we all take a much needed rest, and then we’re off to begin our sight seeing.