RESERVIERT!

Reserviert. Reserved. Already taken. Purchased in advance. Go away. Not for you. Calligraphied on white place cards at fancy dinners, choice seats roped off at church, in theatres. Every single parking space on the campus where I work. The words are music only to the intended honorees. The rest of us mutter, shuffle off to the periphery, squeeze into economy class.

Junior high girls form tight circles; each spot is reserved. There are no place cards, but everybody knows. The right to be here is fragile, so the girls stand there, glancing about, always checking to make sure they don’t get nudged out. They dare not relax their stance, open up the circle to even acknowledge an outsider. To do so is to risk the unthinkable; to have to stand alone.
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It was 1982. Carol Lee and I were traveling in Europe, making our way south from Germany; destination Italy. We had met two other American girls in Munich who were also going to Italy, and who, like us, had been warned:

“Be careful when you go through Italy on the train. You know those Italians. They gas people and steal their wallets and suitcases while they’re sleeping.”

This threat was confirmed by almost every American female traveler we met. We in turn joyfully passed this information on to attractive male travelers. “Beware of the Gassers” became our slogan, causing us to dissolve in laughter.

By the time we were to board the midnight train to Milan, we were at a fever-pitch of excitement, having exhausted ourselves trying to see and do everything. The station was packed, but we four girls vowed solidarity against the gassers.

Squeezing through hundreds of red-eyed Eurail Pass holders, we were ecstatic to find an empty car. We were home free! We gallantly offered one remaining seat to an attractive American male, welcoming him into our circle and telling him about the gassers. He agreed to keep watch.

Suitcases stored overhead, seats reclined, snug, smug, and secure in our English-only car, we congratulated ourselves for finding this empty car. We pitied the latecomers still scrambling to find seats. We dared the Italians to come.

We were finalizing our plans to watch out for swarthy Italians when we were rudely interrupted by a barking German train official. “Aus! Das ist reserviert!” He pointed to the sign on the door.

Silly, stupid Americans we were. We grabbed our bags, rushed out, avoiding the sneers of the reserve ticket holders, to try and find seats anywhere. We lost the cute American. We lost the other two girls. But at least, Carol Lee and I stayed together. Grateful for that, bordering on hysteria from the embarrassment and the dash to find seats, we plopped down, talking non-stop, giggling about gassers, the cute American we’d lost, the Nazi who’d thrown us out, what idiots we were.

We did all this carrying-on in the presence of the two other occupants of the car. A shabbily dressed middle-aged Turk who sat hugging a big paper sack on his lap would steal glances at us shyly. In our vanity we enjoyed his discomfort. The other passenger was a very handsome Scandinavian. We forgot about the cute American.

In our youthful arrogance, we kept up the gasser banter, giggling at everything, secure in our assumption that the two other passengers couldn’t understand a word we were saying, couldn’t understand our giggles about the strange Turk and the gorgeous Swede.

Then he spoke. The gorgeous one. The good-looking blonde one that Carol Lee had eyed me about from the minute we sat down.

In perfect English he chided us, “I don’t think you need to worry about the gassers tonight. The Italians just won the World Cup in soccer, and they’re too busy celebrating to gas anybody.”

I’ve never been so artfully and thoroughly put in my place as on that midnight train to Milan.

It’s a funny, fond memory, evoked by a single word – RESERVED.

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Jesus said to his best friends just a few days before he died, “You can’t come with me, but I’m going to prepare a place for you.” And then he adds this gut-wrenchingly human back-door kind of statement, “If it weren’t so, I would have told you.”

A place for you. Reserved. Permanent.

If it weren’t so, He would have told us.