the Forty Seventh Story

When I was a junior in High School, my brother did a semester abroad in France. Naturally, I went to visit. He had classes, though, so I was on my own for some hours each day. During one of these periods, I took myself to the Louvre. I was supposed to be meeting my brother after his class, at roughly 4pm, on the other side of town. And I got lost. Truly, awfully, horrendously lost. I could not get out of that museum. There is, I kid you not, a staircase in one of the upper galleries which has, at the top, an exit sign, pointing down, and, at the bottom, an exit sign, pointing up. Picture me, if you care to, at age 16, frantically searching for a way out of the Louvre, getting distracted at every turn by something that simply demanded my attention. Luckily, not too long after the museum closed at 5h30, I was very politely thrown out. By the time I made it to my brother, he was pretty well worried sick.