How the Gemma Saved Christmas
All pictures were recreated or taken prior to the incident
Once upon a time, there was an awesome string quartet with a retarded name. The quartet and its name
were both established long before any of its current members attended the school in which it was based,
so it wasn't their fault. Anyway, two of its members had trouble remembering to get their instruments
out of the music building for gigs before it was locked. One of those two was worse than the others.
Her name was Gemma. The other one was me. Whenever we forgot about our gear, we would have to call the
security guards and beg them to come over and unlock the building. One of those times, Gemma gave me
the phone number that directly connects to the guards when they're on patrol. I had the main campus
number, but I could never remember their extension. With this new number, I wouldn't need the extension.
When I got a new phone this past summer, I didn't want to pay $10 to get my numbers transfered, so I
did it myself, by hand. I cleaned out some of the numbers that I never used, but I saved the
security office number. Now fast forward back to present times.
It all started on Saturday afternoon. The semester ended on Friday. I had to play a wedding late
Saturday afternoon, with the same quartet, only with 75% different members. Since the semester was
over, all my housemates had already gone home. I decided to stick around until Sunday, because I didn't
want to be driving until 2am after the wedding. For some reason, before I left the apartment, I locked
the door.
I convinced Dan to water my plants over break. Because we have to lock our door over break, he needed
my key to get in. He was at the wedding. At the reception I realized that because I had randomly
locked my door, I couldn't give him the key at that time. That kind of irritated me, because it meant
that I would have to make a stop at his house the next day before I left.
The next day I started packing up my car. I grabbed my hat, my cello and a bag of junk and headed out
to the car. I was halfway down the stairs when I realized that A, my keys were in my jacket, and B,
I wasn't sure if I'd ever unlocked the door or not. I was pretty sure that I had, but I wasn't positive.
I figured that whether or not it was locked, it would stay that way, so I carried the stuff out to the
car rather than turning around and checking. Sure enough, when I got back, it was locked. I banged on it
and jiggled the handle, but it was still locked.
So I went downstairs to ask the building HR to open it, but there was a note on his door saying he'd
be gone for the next two hours. I reached for my phone. I wasn't sure who I was going to call, but
I figured I'd get an idea flipping through my phone book. Of course it wasn't in my pocket.
Now I was out of ideas. I was in an almost completely deserted building, 15 minutes from campus, with
no keys, no phone and no plan. I went back out to my car. I knew there was another RD living in
the building, but I didn't know where he lived. I hoped I would find something in my car that would point me his
direction, because I knew I had a pile of old crap from the beginning of the year in my trunk. I figured
that digging through that would be easier than walking 15 minutes without a coat up to campus, hoping
to find an apartment number or security guard.
I opened my door to pop my trunk, only to see my phone, still plugged into the charger from driving
back after the wedding.
About 30 seconds later I had security on the phone, and they said they would be there in under 10
minutes. Rather surprisingly, they were right. Not very long later, I was once again packing my car,
and on my way home for Christmas. All thanks to a phone number that Gemma gave me over a year ago.
