The Great Tuna Caper

Sometimes, life is just funny….

Allow me to set the scene: Tim has a friend named Holly. She is currently in Hawaii, but owns a house in Boquete. She has a friend (David), who comes to Panama with some friends every year to go tuna fishing. David needed some freezer space for a few days to store their catch until they got on a plane back to the US.

I have a good relationship with my former landlord, Don, and he has a small chest freezer at the house I rented from him. He gave me permission to let them use it to store their tuna, and David was supposed to contact us this evening at 5:30 to transfer the tuna to Don’s freezer.

Well, 5:30 came and went, and we tried to call David. No answer, but Tim left a message. He also e-mailed Holly to let her know we were waiting for the “tuna drop”, as she referred to it.

About 8:30, I got a phone call. The person on the other end said, “Hi, Kathleen! This is David, and I’m in town. Tell me where to meet.” I told him I wasn’t Kathleen, and he then asked if I was her daughter. I had a strange feeling that this David was the same person we were supposed to meet earlier this evening. He asked if this was a wrong number, and I said, “You said your name was David, right?” He answered in the affirmative. “You don’t happen to have some tuna with you, do you?” He excitedly replied, “Yes, I do! We’re desperate – we have 600 pounds of tuna, and we can’t find a freezer anywhere!”

I gave him directions to Don’s house, and they filled his freezer. However, it held way less than half of the tuna. David told me that Kathleen (who he thought he was calling when he called me) had some space in her freezer, so we arranged to meet at her place. It so happens that I know both Kathleen and her daughter, and found this situation pretty amusing for that reason.

Just after I called Kathleen, David learned that the guy who was housesitting for Holly was at her house just then, so we trucked on over to her place instead, to see if she had the capability to store the rest of the tuna. Holly happens to live just a block or so away from Don’s house, so it was a quick trip there.

I tried to call Kathleen, but didn’t have wi-fi at Holly’s house, so I had to run back to Don’s to connect and let Kathleen know we would be there later than planned. But fortunately, they were able to offload the rest of the tuna to Holly’s freezer, so I had to call Kathleen AGAIN and let her know we wouldn’t need to use her freezer. That was sort of an awkward conversation, because she was waiting for us at the entrance of her gated community, and hadn’t sounded too pleased to be bothered at that late hour in the first place. Sorry, Kathleen!!!

So, late in the evening, Tim and I launched into this crazy adventure of finding homes for a LOT of freshly caught tuna, experiencing a “wrong” number that turned out to be the totally right one, loaded tuna into the freezer at my former residence, and got rid of the rest of it at Tim’s friend Holly’s house.

If you’ve kept up with the cast of players, it goes something like this. Tim knows Holly. Holly knows David the fisherman. David and Holly both know Kathleen. Tim and I had dinner with Kathleen and her daughter last week, and had no idea they knew Tim’s friend Holly. Neither Tim nor I knew David at all, except that Holly arranged for us to meet. Small world, indeed!

The interconnection between the participants, the good fortune that Holly and Don’s houses are so close to each other in the same neighborhood, and the unusual reason for this late-night jaunt in the first place (just how often do you need to find some quick frozen storage for 600 pounds of tuna???) made for a hilarious adventure that was also a win-win situation. The guys got to save their catch, and promised me a generous reward (in tuna, of course) for helping them. That works for me!