Sometimes, you have to know when to quit.
In the summer of 2012, my family decided to travel to Paris. We spent a week seeing sights like the Louvre and stuffing ourselves full of croissants. But on our last night, my parents were upset to realize we still had not taken the Bateaux Mouches, a boat tour down the Seine. And so, they wrangled my five siblings and me, and we set out to do one last Parisian activity.
As we arrived at the dock, the man in the ticket office sadly informed us that we had just missed the cutoff to buy tickets for the 10 p.m. cruise, but if we stuck around, he could get us on the 11 p.m. Though this news may have deterred other parents with six young children, my parents remained steadfast in their commitment to the Bateaux Mouches, and we waited.
We sat around for an hour, tiredly awaiting the 11 p.m. boat, until finally we were able to board. We bestirred ourselves to stand up and we all slowly shuffled our way onto the boat. Though I was excited to see Paris one last time, once I boarded, I fell promptly asleep. As I slept through the sightseeing, my brother Robert had an even more exciting ride than he had bargained for.
After using the bathroom, he found the lock had jammed itself in place and would not open. Luckily, after some banging and screaming, someone came to his assistance. Less luckily, the man only spoke French and therefore was unable
to communicate enough to figure out what was wrong. My mom, who does speak French, could have come to his rescue, but my sister had traded shoes with her, as her own were giving her blisters, and my mom was rendered helpless.
Luckily, after some time and some help, Robert finally got out of the bathroom. He came back to join the rest of us, and we soon got off the boat. This was, unfortunately, just the beginning. We tried hailing a taxi to no avail, and it became clear that our best course of action was instead to take the metro. Upon arriving at the station, we discovered the pay station was broken, and we resorted to jumping the turnstile one by one. After making my father lift me over the turnstile, we made our way to the platform only to discover, that it was, of course, packed.
After a considerable 45-minute wait on the stuffy platform, the train eventually came. After lots of pushing and shoving (at some point I was used as a human battering ram to make room for the rest of my family), we made our way onto the packed train car. After the train trip, we finally made our way back to the hotel. We all quickly came to the same conclusion: We absolutely should not have ridden the Bateaux Mouches. As we each wandered into our rooms and collapsed into bed, none of us were excited for the early wake-up awaiting us in the morning before our flight.
This entire experience taught me a valuable lesson: I should not push myself to do every last thing. It turns out that, sometimes, you just have to admit you don’t have time to stop and smell the roses. It’s important to recognize the value in taking a break and putting something off if it feels like too much to fit into your schedule. Sometimes, you have to realize that you don’t need to go on the Bateaux Mouches.
