Wednesday, February 04, 2004

The Forgotten Bag (by Alex)

BOSTON, February 4th

In the airport today, a very funny thing happened, funny in my eyes, but not in anyone else’s. You can be the judge when you finish reading.

Sarah was bringing bags downstairs that were going to be put in the cab. She couldn't carry one of the bags downstairs, because it was too heavy. She kind of mumbled to my dad that there was one bag left upstairs. My dad was so concentrated on whatever he was doing that he kind of dismissed the comment.

The cab arrived, so Sarah and I began to bring the bags out to it. As we got in the car, my dad looked around, and it all looked good. He had not taken any bags out to the car, so he did not know which bags had been brought out, and which had not.

We got to the airport, and even got in a line before we realized that the bag was missing. The bag contained Sarah and mom's clothes.

Also, off the topic, my clothes could not have been in there because I got the remaining (tiny) bag for MY clothes.

My dad quickly called the Taxi Company. He arranged this whole tag-team type solution. Our neighbor (Mrs. Duys) would let the taxi driver into the house with her copy of the keys. Next, he would find the 80lb suitcase using a set of directions dictated by my father. He would then bring the suitcase to the airport within 30 minutes (our time limit given to us by the airport service representatives who were concerned about boarding the international flight).

My parents had cancelled their cell phones the day before, so it complicated things quite a bit. We couldn't board the airplane without the last bag, but we couldn't split up, because we had no cell phones. It was a lose-lose situation, so the family decided that we would rather stay together as a family and would all take a later flight if the bag did no arrive.

What ended up happening was the bag came right on the deadline, and there were still people behind us in the security line to get into the plane. All's well that ends well. But that doesn't mean nails weren't bit in the mean time.

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