Time Warp

We were asked to seat ourselves in the "waiting area" that was composed of one big wooden desk and several wheeled office chairs - each missing wheels. The officer I first spoke to informed me that they were in the middle of a shift change, but that someone would be with us in ten minutes.

Half an hour later, we were still waiting. I went up to the front desk where an older police officer was tediosly writing things down a registry. I asked him if we could maybe get some help, and that we had been waiting for thirty minutes. Officers were swarming around, laughing and giggling and wishing one another a good day. The older man looked at me and said, "It's to make a theft claim?" I nodded. "Yeah, just wait, ok? Can't you see there's nobody here?"

It looked to me like there were over fifteen officers there, but I guess he was the authority on the matter.

Finally, after another ten minutes, we sat down in front of machine (that looked like it was from 1986) with a rather slow policeman to go over the events. They were explained in minute detail, and he listened intentlly, checking and triple checking such essential facts as "Did she notice her wallet was missing before or after buying her train tickets?" I clarified by reminding him that it's hard to buy train tickets with a missing wallet.

And I shit you not, the officer typed out the entire claim with one. lone. index. finger. Each word was spelled out painfully and ever so slowly, drawing out what should have been a five-minute ordeal to almost thirty. While his right index finger danced slowly across the dirty keyboard, his left one followed line-by-line a hand-written guide to making a claim scrawled across a piece of crumpled, folded paper that had obviously been used several times over the last several years. I suppose the idea of making a typed-up version has yet to occur to them, or maybe my officer friend is working on one off-hours but has yet to complete it (projected completion: January 2006).

While my Mom was siging the papers that my trusty yet idiotic policeman had so painstakingly assembled, I went to talk to the head of police to ask if we could call the train station to see if any wallets had been found. A lost and found of sorts.

He looked at me cross-eyed through his glasses that magnified his already buggy eyes, and said, "I don't understand what you want." Luckily a younger, more with-it officer standing by happened to have listened in, and jumped at the opportunity to make himself useful. He asked the police chief where the phone list was, and the chief indicated to a cut-out piece of cardboard sitting behind the filing system to my right. The younger cop pulled it out, and on the front was taped a white sheet of paper with numbers written chaotically all over it. Amongst the chaos, he managed to find the number to the lost and found.

All in all, it was probably a worthless trip, as most likely the wallet won't turn up. And, if it did, the police would probably manage to lose it somehow. However, I told my parents that this was getting to know the "Real Paris," the scenic route for experienced, off-the-beaten path travelers like themselves.

And my mom got a five-page souvenir, too: a stolen property claim.