It was Saturday. I’d spent the last three days serving in the Awana booth at the Children’s Pastors’ Conference in Orlando — most of the time heavily medicated to dull the symptoms of a cold. And I’d spent the last three hours helping the booth crew disassemble the booth. It was done at last. We had a couple hours to kill before heading to the airport for the flight home.
The conference was at the Coronado Springs Resort in Disney World. Several of my coworkers were attending the conference, and the final session was due to close in about half an hour, so those of us on the booth crew were waiting.
I don’t wait very well. Coronado Springs has a huge lobby area with a high ceiling outside the exhibition hall, and it was completely empty. I began tossing the rental car key up in the air and catching it. This entertained me for about three minutes.
Then I decided to make it more challenging. The lobby contained several skylights that extended another 20 feet above the floor. I tossed the key as high as I could up into one of these skylights.
As soon as I threw it, I knew I’d made a mistake. The key drifted toward the side of the skylight and landed on a ledge at least 35 feet above the floor.
I immediately yelled at myself “I did not do that! I did not just do that!”
The thought that ran through my mind at that moment was this: Worst case, my coworkers would head off to lunch while I waited around for four hours or so until somebody at Disney could figure out what to do. Best case, one of my coworkers would have to drive me to the rental car place at the airport and I’d have to buy a new key. It said right on the key chain — Replacement of a lost key — up to $250.
About seven of my coworkers were in the lobby with me. One of them pointed way down the hallway to where a woman was about to walk out a door. “Get her, she works at the hotel.” I ran down the hallway calling to her, and when she stopped I said, “I just did something really stupid.” She followed me back down the lobby and I pointed to the ledge.
She smiled and said she’d return shortly. She walked off. My friends ribbed me pretty mercilessly, and I stood there and took it. They couldn’t come close to giving me what I was giving myself at that point.
After about 10 minutes the woman returned. She’d talked to somebody and said some guys would show up shortly with a scissor lift. While we waited, the final conference session ended and about 12 other coworkers began filtering down the hall toward us in groups of two or three. As each group arrived, they were filled in on the excitement, and I got some very interesting looks.
Finally the scissor-lift came chugging down the hallway. Two guys were in it, and they had big grins on their faces. I pointed to where the key had landed, and they maneuvered the lift up into the skylight. I can be seen on the right in this photo, looking stupid.
All my coworkers formed a semi-circle around the lift and took photographs and video. There were even a few strangers who stopped by and joined the fun. I was standing on the opposite side of the lift, and after a few minutes, I noticed that several cameras were being pointed in my direction. I walked around behind everyone and watched the proceedings from the back row.
There were no complications. They guys managed to fit the lift into the skylight and grab the key. On the way down, they were laughing. One said that they’d never had the lift that high before. They were treating the whole thing like a grand adventure. You can see where the key landed in the photo below — on the ledge where the blue skylight frame joins the wall above the round lights.
I realized that I couldn’t remain in the background. I was my penance to take the walk of shame out into the circle and take the key from the guy. I thanked him and immediately tossed it to a coworker.
I don’t think a half hour passed from the time I made the stupid throw until I had the key back in my hand. It occurred to me that it was a good thing I’d done it at Disney. There are a lot of places that would have told me I was out of luck.
Once I realized how quickly and easily the problem was going to be solved, I wasn’t as upset, but it was embarrassing. I also found out who my friends were.
I got a lot of teasing, and that’s fine. I had it coming. But before the day was over, almost everyone of my coworkers found an opportunity to say …
- that they felt badly for me and hoped I wasn’t too upset.
- that they could very easily see themselves doing something similar.
- that they were impressed that I’d gotten the key so high and that I should be proud.
We all went out for lunch and made it to the airport with three hours to spare, so it turned out to be nothing more than a bit of entertainment. But in the future, I think I’ll hang on to my keys.
