The Power of a Window Left Open
How do you prepare for a plane flight the next morning? Experts suggest getting good sleep the night before, checking for flight delays and cancellations, and arriving at the airport a few hours before your flight. Oh, and don’t forget about your passport and other travel documents.
What experts definitively do not suggest is breaking into a building to get the laptop you left in there a few hours before the flight.
Especially if you’re in a foreign country. And slightly hungover.
If you told me I would misplace or lose some valuable items during my summer exchange program in Shanghai, China, I would probably believe you since I lose and misplace things quite easily—from umbrellas, to keys, to phones. But leaving my laptop in a classroom? Even I would gawk in disbelief at that. But that’s what happened when, during my last-minute packing, I realized my laptop wasn’t in my dorm room.
Initially, I refuse to acknowledge that it is missing. It does not process in my mind that the laptop was not present in the room I was in. I search everywhere inside: under the bed, in the closet, in the bathroom. I open and reopen cabinets in a desperate attempt to find it shoved somewhere in my room. After about ten minutes of looking in every crevice possible twice, I have to admit that my laptop is not in my room. But where else could it be? I stubbornly think.
I then employ the strategy I use when I lose things called “mental time reversal,” which is when I try to remember when and where I last placed or saw the thing I lost. This strategy has had moderate success in the past, depending on how focused my mind is and how important the thing I lost is to me.
The slight brain fog from the drinks I had the night before increases my confusion. It is the morning after the last day of the exchange program. Everything was busier than usual yesterday, and I was even less attentive to my belongings. Nonetheless, I now manage to remember that I brought my laptop to class yesterday morning. After class, I left campus to enjoy one last day with friends, unknowingly also leaving my laptop behind.
The process of realizing that my laptop is missing is quite dramatic. When I realize that I left something in a place I wasn’t supposed to, the feeling is almost transcendental; time slows down and everything seems to stop moving. I think in my head, Oh, that’s where I left it!, and the reality of what I did comes rushing at my brain in full force.
My initial reaction is panic, but it quickly evolves into thinking about how I can retrieve the item and what the steps are to do so: I still have a few hours before I have to arrive at the airport, so I can bike to where the classroom building is on campus and ask someone there if I can quickly go back inside to retrieve my laptop.
Quick problem-solving in urgent situations like this is a characteristic of mine that I like. However, it is also likely the result of a characteristic I don’t like: forgetfulness.
With no time to waste, I exit the dorm and grab one of the public bikes available. Even in the early morning, Shanghai is hot, so I feel the sweat on my forehead when I arrive at the entrance. The classroom is in a building that is part of a small cluster behind a gate.
I ask the security guard at the gate if they could unlock the door to the building and let me inside to retrieve my laptop. Since I speak Chinese, I can ask the people there for help without much issue. Unfortunately, the security guard replies, “I’m not in charge of the buildings in this area, so I can’t unlock them for you. But you can try to find someone who works in one to do so.”
I simultaneously sigh and scream in my mind.
Sweating both physically and figuratively, I walk around trying to find someone. I see some maintenance workers trimming trees and even ask the staff in the nearby cafeteria if they can open the building. But none of them can.
I stare at the three-storey building which contains my laptop inside. I couldn’t believe the only thing separating me from it was a locked door. There must be some other entryway inside.
Wait. Buildings have windows. And this building has windows too. On the first floor which I can reach. And windows open to the outside. Can I open one and climb inside?
I am surprisingly creative when I’m hungover.
The lack of people around to help me turns into an advantage as nobody can see me climb onto the first-floor windowsill and slide open the unlocked window. I feel like a secret agent doing parkour, especially once I have to walk into the empty hallways and climb a flight of stairs to get to the classroom where my laptop was. I don’t know if anybody saw me on the security cameras inside, but I feel confident at the moment seeing as nobody is around to stop me from doing something I’m not supposed to.
While I’m inside, I think about what I will do if my laptop isn’t in there after I technically broke into a school building to find it. (Legally of course).
Honestly, I don’t know what I would do in that outcome because I find my laptop where I think it is: inside a desk in the classroom. I walk back to the first floor, climb back on the windowsill—which is surprisingly higher from the ground than I thought it was—and jump down onto the ground outside unscathed, unharmed, with my laptop in hand, and with only a bit of dirt and dust on me from the windowsill. I exit the gate and bike back to my dorm.
On the way back, I think about how this incident has resulted in one of my most athletic and resourceful moments. I felt proud of my achievement. It’s strange how a person’s perception of traumatic events can be so delusional in the present. But I think that’s what creates amazing stories that find humour and bravery in those past moments.
I would like to say that this story would be told in a much different tone if I did not find my laptop, but if that happened, you would likely not be reading about this incident nor know of its existence.
I’m glad windows exist and are occasionally left open sometimes. I probably shouldn’t say that out loud to people.