I'll make this brief. How often have you heard the expression, "you never know how you're going to react in a panic"? Well, I certainly don't. Here we were, Lily and me, in Mexico City helping out Jesse and Laura with their almost five year old kids, twins Oliver and Charlie. Jesse needed to be up in Washington as Laura was officially becoming a Foreign Service officer, and we were more than happy to fill in as guardians of these adorable and enormously non-stop hyperactive kids who know us as Meme and Poppy. What an opportunity to further bond with these young ones while helping Jesse and Laura be together for this momentous occasion.
So, one day we decided to take the kids to a nearby mall which had a lovely indoor playground which the kids love and which would enable us to drain some of Oliver and Charlie's effervescent energy. After about an hour of constant climbing and rocketing down some steep slides surrounded by many other exuberant kids, Charlie came yelling to me that he needed to pee! When Charlie does this, he normally gives about a 12 second notice of the the upcoming event. This is not something Charlie likes to casually defer until it's convenient for his folks to help him take care of this task, or in this case Lily and me. So, I knew action by me needed to be immediate and effective. I mean, what we wanted to avoid at all costs was Charlie losing control and flooding his pants amidst a soundtrack of bellowing yells by the young man which would reasonably have drawn a fair amount of attention that Charlie would likely not enjoy.
So, I pushed the panic button! I had no idea where the bathrooms might be and so I ran to anyone looking like a local employee and in my ever so rudimentary Spanish pleaded with the person to tell me where the "bano" was. I was given what I thought were sort of vague directions judging by the casual response and relaxed waving of arms. But, the directions were all in Spanish leaving me without a firm grip of where I should be headed. I spotted a food court nearby and figured this area must be what I was being advised to direct myself to. Charlie and I ran. I knew time was running very short and no doubt I needlessly hyped the problem into a world shattering event.
At last I spotted a sign for the bathrooms and sprinted with Charlie to the much needed destination. Seeing the door, we crashed in and got Charlie to a toilet just in time to avoid a very wet event. I felt so relieved. We had succeeded! But then, as I waiting for Charlie to finish up, and as my panic dissipated I noticed that along the wall in the bathroom stood a woman looking at me quizzically. Her head was sort of tilted with a message I could only interpret as "what the hell are you doing in here?!?" Oops, I had failed to notice in my task of urgency that the sign on the door we crashed through said "mujeres," not a place gentlemen are supposed to be. In that moment, I dearly wished my Spanish skills were more advanced, but instead I was left to invoke my best charades strategies to demonstrate my sincere apologies and embarrassment. I cringed and held my hands to my face and spoke my regrets in English hoping the lady would get a sense of the genuineness I was trying to communicate. I thought I detected a very slight grin on her part, or at least that's what I wanted to read into her gaze. I sort of bowed, took Charlie's hand and backed out of the "bano por las mujeres."
So, I guess my advice here is when in panic mode don't forget to read the labels on the doors. They're helpful. Later when Oliver needed to pee I knew exactly where to go, and exactly where not to go. As they say, lesson learned.
