And so this week’s moment of happiness despite the news.
Remember the movie, On Golden Pond, where the father, played by Henry Fonda, is on a walk in the woods in a familiar place, but he becomes lost?
I was Henry Fonda last week, but I wasn’t in the woods. I was in a parking garage that I’ve been in many times before. Unlike the famous episode of Seinfeld, where the characters can’t find where they parked their car, I knew where my car was. I was in sight of it. But I had no idea where I was supposed to be, or how I was supposed to get there.
I was asked to come to one of Milwaukee’s tv/radio stations, to be recorded in an interview for a show called Conversations. I was delighted that I actually had to go to the station and be in a sound booth. My publicist told me that the station was housed in what used to be the Grand Avenue Mall in downtown Milwaukee, a place that used to be a real showpiece, but was now simply called The Avenue. It’s mostly a home for offices and apartments, though there is a fabulous food court there.
I used to go to this mall often, when my husband worked downtown. We would shop there or have dinner, and we belonged to the Y at the very top of the building. So I was very familiar with the building as a mall, and I knew the parking garage inside and out.
My publicist sent me directions as to where to go from the parking garage to the station, but the directions came in photographs, which immediately raised red flags for me. If I get instructions in pictures instead of words for building anything, I know it’s a lost cause. I can’t interpret it. But here, I thought, well, you know the mall, you know the parking garage, how hard can it be?
I had to shift my schedule in order to do this. The interview was to be from 10 in the morning to 11. I moved a client to 11:30, figuring I’d have no trouble making it home. Remember that.
I found my way easily to the mall and the parking garage. It has several entrances, so I chose the one that looked the most like the picture. One of the pictures showed a sign that said, “3rd Street Market” with an arrow pointing straight. I found that sign…but it pointed to a guardrail several floors up. That was my first puzzle.
Deciding this meant I had to go to the nearby stairway, I parked my car and walked over. But the stairway only led to more parking spaces. Getting a little nervous, I returned to the floor with my car. It was creeping close to ten. I had to find the door that led to the mall which led to a skyway which led to my appointment. Looking out of the parking garage, I could see the skyway. But I couldn’t find any door that led to it.
This led to a search for a phone number. There was nothing from my publicist, and when I looked at the website for the station, there was no phone number. I finally found a number on Facebook, which brought me to someone in the newsroom. He was a newsguy waiting for someone else who was being interviewed, so he said someone would call me right back. She did, and she asked me where I was.
“3rd floor of the parking garage,” I said.
“Do you see the sign for the 3rd Street Market?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said. “But I don’t want to drive through a guardrail.”
“Oh, man. Someone must have moved it.” She asked me which direction I was facing.
This is a horrible thing to ask me. I have no idea about directions. I know left, right, straight, backwards. I looked out of the parking garage again. “I don’t see Lake Michigan,” I said. “So I have no idea which way I’m facing.” I described what I saw. Nothing sounded familiar to her.
“Do you see a doorway that has plywood on it?” she asked. I told her I did, and she told me to wait there, she’d come get me.
This was right up ten o’clock. I waited until 10:30. By this time, I noticed the door with the plywood was completely sealed off. No way in, no way out. The interview was now a half hour late, and even if it started right then, I wouldn’t have made it home for my 11:30 client.
I tried calling the newsroom again, but only got voicemail. Feeling between a rock and a hard place, I made the difficult decision to be unprofessional.
“I’m going home,” I said to the voicemail. “I don’t know where you are or how to get there. Someone was supposed to find me, but they haven’t. It’s a half-hour late, and I have to get back for a client. Please come up with directions with words, and not photogaphs.”
I was pretty close to tears when I left. I absolutely hate being lost. But even more, I hate being lost in a place that I know! I knew where I was. I just didn’t know how to get from here to there, because I didn’t know where there was.
I was about five minutes away when the person who was supposed to interview me called. “Where are you?” she asked. “There are two of us here, wandering around the parking garage, and we’ve been yelling your name.”
For some reason, the vision of this, two people wandering around a busy parking garage in downtown Milwaukee, my name echoing as they yelled, made me laugh. She began to laugh too. “Wasn’t there an episode of Seinfeld about this?” I gasped.
“We were just saying that!” she laughed back.
“Well, I left,” I said. “I’m sorry, I have to be back for a client.”
“Do you want to turn around and come back?”
No way in hell. “No, I’m sorry, but my client is at 11:30. I need to get there.”
So we arranged that I would go back on Friday, three days later. I had absolutely no confidence that I would find my way. She told me to call as soon as I arrived in the parking garage.
I returned and found a different entrance, with that same sign, but not pointing to a guardrail. I parked my car and called her. She said, “Do you see a doorway?” I did, and it didn’t have any plywood. “Go in there and wait in the vestibule. I’ll be right there.”
I went in an actual door and waited. While I did, I looked in at what used to the be mall’s rotunda. I knew that! I recognized that! I knew where I was!
She called. “Where are you?”
“I’m by the rotunda.”
“The what?”
Oh, dear lord. I described what I was seeing, she told me to wait, and finally, she popped out of the elevator. As we walked to the station, I realized I was nowhere near where I was supposed to be. And the inside of the mall was so different, I couldn’t say exactly where we were.
But I made it. And the interview went beautifully. It will air sometime in January.
And my moment of happiness? I made it back to my car. Without help.
I have never been so happy to see my car in my life. It was never lost. Only I was. I did a little happy dance, yelled my name out into the echoing parking garage, and then drove happily home.
And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.
