Trapped: A Story

I find myself trapped a lot. Too often for my liking, really.

And I’m not talking metaphorically.

There was that time I unexpectedly rode an elevator up and down nonstop for 45 minutes at a hotel in San Francisco. (Did I mention I’m very susceptible to motion sickness? You do the math.)

There was the memorable experience of getting locked in a housing project in London, England, after being given the wrong address where I was to meet people. That one was really interesting, since I didn’t have a local SIM card, so no way to reach anyone to let them know I was trapped. How the heck would I get out of the locked gate — who locks an exit gate, anyway? — and how the heck would I find the people I was supposed to meet? (Thankfully, my colleagues sent out a search party to find me, and when I finally escaped the compound, they miraculously ran into me wandering the streets.)

This afternoon I was trying to exit an underground parking lot, but could not get the garage door to open. A note on my receipt said the exit code was 1245, but there was nowhere to enter said code. With my car parked at the exit booth and hazard lights flashing, I meandered (well, lurched, semi panic-stricken, is probably more accurate) around the lot, looking for an attendant, to no avail. I picked up several serious-looking red “emergency” phones and waited for a security guard to answer, but got no response.

The lot was eerily quiet. Not a soul was around. I called the toll-free number near the booth. “You’ve reached ParkSafe. We’re not available, but please call back in 10 minutes.”

When these things happen to me, I sometimes have a brief flash that this will later make for an amusing story.

You’re reading this now, so it means I finally made it out of the garage. While I was having dinner with my friend, I got this brief text from Mark at ParkSafe:

It was cool that Mark got back to me. He seemed nice.