(Keywords: human interest, travel, France)
Length <1000 words
Key Policies Are Easy
to Remember
(first printed in
GSAE Magazine. ©Copyright John P.
Harrison)
On behalf
of my employer, I used to travel a lot to the corners of the globe. Nowadays, it’s usually just as advantageous
to conduct business from Atlanta Europe to be our French-speaking
representative at an exhibition recently in France Europe
and two years in the Middle East , I’m pretty jaded about
travel; still, remembering to take in a new sight is a key to keeping it fresh. Here’s what happened.
First, I came to speak French by a fortunate exchange
my mother made when I was about five years old.
We lived in an apartment in Atlanta
So, 40-some odd years later, I’m
doing my thing in the south of France
I thought as much. I even stayed at an out-of-the-way old hotel
that the savvy French visitor might choose.
It was an old mansion, converted into an inexpensive and very quaint
hotel of about 40 rooms. It’s a good
walk of almost a mile to the convention center, but it beat staying in a
generic business hotel, both in cost and atmosphere.
I headed out of the hotel for the
convention center. I had on my dark
European-made suit, I knew my route, I spoke the language, I was not standing
out. I walked past a beautiful Gothic
church and noticed a poor woman with babe in arms begging on the church
steps. My step was brisk, and by the
time I remembered my personal policy on street giving, I was well past her.
Every one from the richer countries
develops a personal policy or philosophy on how to treat the person begging on
the street. Even not developing a philosophy is still a philosophy. In my earlier phase of life as a frequent
traveler, I came up with something that worked for me. My policy was something like this: I don’t give to people begging on the street,
but instead make a trip to a local Cathedral and put an amount in the little
box that’s labeled “for the poor” and then get on with my travels. The risk of giving to the poor this way—in
terms of time, fraud, or misuse—seems much less than giving directly to a
street person. In short, I’m depending
on the non-profit intermediary and don’t really have to get involved or risk
being overcome by a crowd of beggars.
Soon I arrived at the convention
center, went straight to our stand to prepare for the day, and sacré bleu, I had left the key to our stand’s
cabinet that contained all the samples at the hotel. So an even brisker walk back to the hotel to
retrieve the forgotten key. The poor
beggar woman and baby on the church steps were but a blur this time; I was
trying to minimize lost time.
I got to the hotel and went up to
the front desk to ask the clerk for my key (they still used the clunky skeleton
keys – no keycards to swipe here). But in front of
me at the counter was a doddering little old lady. Grandma was asking the receptionist in
English about the breakfast possibilities.
Now this lady was 80 plus if she was a day, and from her manner of
speech, she was from the South (of the US
“Ma’am,” I said, remembering the
part of the world I really came from, “I know a little restaurant right down
the street that has a good breakfast deal for five and a half Euros – about the
best you can find around here.”
“Oh, that’s wonderful,” she smiled,
“now tell me how to get there, if you don’t mind, young man.”
I gave her the directions quickly,
got my key from the desk, hiked up to the room, and, alas, the clerk had given
me the wrong key. Down the stairs again,
return the wrong key, double check for the right key, back up four flights of
stairs—and, by the way, these stairs were large enough and grand enough that
they could have been used in the filming of Gone
With the Wind. I recover the key to
the exhibit stand, go back down the stairs and out the door. By the time I headed out of the hotel, the
little old Southern lady was no where in sight.
Apparently she had already shuffled to her destination.
I headed back toward the convention
center, past the church—the beggar woman and child were no longer there—and
past the little restaurant with the breakfast special. My walk was quick, and I only shot a brief
glance toward the restaurant. It
wouldn’t hurt to see if grandma had indeed gotten there for breakfast, I
thought.
I stopped in my tracks. She was there alright. She was sitting at a table, eating with the
beggar woman and the baby. Grandma’s
personal street giving policy looked a lot more efficient than mine. The three
of them sharing a meal in that corner café is the sight I remember from that
trip to France
©Copyright 2007 John P. Harrison . All rights reserved.
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