Could someone please help me with this whole “lost luggage” thing? Its as confusing to me as non-accident related traffic jams (there is someone up at the front of that damn traffic jam and they are JUST SITTING THERE!).
I hand you my luggage. You then print out some sort of sticker bracelet with my very own specific bar code all over it. You wrap this indestructible material around the handle of my luggage and I KNOW how tough that shit it because I had to cut it off with a damn steak knife when I got home. You then place my luggage on that conveyer belt thingy and it goes away. To someone else. Who scans it and finds out EXACTLY where it needs to go. Now here’s the kicker… I? Didn’t change flights. Nope. Direct flight. Didn’t pass go, didn’t collect $200, nothing. I just went to Atlanta on an airplane.
My luggage? Apparently had other travel plans.
Let’s examine this scene, shall we? Its 10:00 in the evening. When I got on the airplane in Seattle, it was 2:00 in the afternoon. I’m okay at 2:00 in the afternoon. Pleasant even. But at 10:00 in the evening after 4,562 hours on a plane in front of three teenage girls who cannot speak without screeching or dancing a jig on the back of my seat and who smell, inexplicably, like Jolly Ranchers, I’m not quite so fun. I might even be considered hostile.
And I’m not looking forward to the very long trek back to my precious car. Nor am I eager to face the 2 hour drive home. Because there are some people who cannot sleep in a moving vehicle. I? Am one of those people. But in a rare moment of brainstorm activity prompted by the mass of what I estimate to be 300 people crammed around a luggage carousel that is repeatedly jamming because it is delivering the luggage for 6 different flights, I suggested that we go get the car, bring it a little closer, and by the time we get back, the crowd will have diminished, we can pick up our luggage, and I probably won’t strangle anyone with their own tongue.
So we started walking. And walking. And then we saw the most beautiful thing I’ve ever laid eyes on. A little man in a golf cart. And he TOOK US TO OUR CAR. And I tipped him 10 bucks. It was a toss up between that or a lap dance. I figured Patrick would prefer losing a little cash.
This wonderful and unexpected bonus had us back in the baggage claim area much faster than expected. Apparently, it also cleared out much earlier than expected because it was a ghost town. Everyone was gone. Even the little child I’d nearly caused to pee in his pants when I gave him the look of death after he stepped on my toe. So we take a brief moment to revel in our stroke of sheer genius and stroll up to the baggage carousel. And look. And look. And realize that our bags? Are not among the lost little orphans riding the magic merry go round. Nor are they in any of the random groups of luggage scattered about. ANYWHERE.
I burst into tears. Because that is the helpful thing to do when it is closing in on midnight, you are two hours from home, starving, grumpy, and you’ve just realized that after a three year quest for the perfect hairbrush it may be lost somewhere between Atlanta and Seattle.
We look around and find what looks to be the line for lost baggage. And we wait and wait and wait. And we keep hoping that we’ll see SOMEONE we recognize from our flight waiting for their luggage too. Maybe the ambiguously gay man who shared our row or the guy that I’m pretty sure I graduated from high school with but we never spoke 10 years ago so he probably wouldn’t remember me now and even if he did what would we talk about? “Hey. You grew out of that eternal awkwardness really well and your wife is also kind of familiar. How’s it going man?” Plus, I wasn’t completely certain I could remember his name anyway.
Oh my GOD this is so long, I’m hating it already…wrap it UP! DAMN! Aren’t you glad I decided to split this into two entries? Don’t you wish it were like seven instead and I’d just start a new website devoted to hating the Atlanta airport (which I actually don’t…I just hate the Atlanta airport when it is my starting point or my final destination) and not tell anyone about it so you would all be spared this mindless drivel? Don’t you wish I’d not waste time on this paragraph and just GET TO THE FUCKING POINT?
Okay.
Our luggage WAS in Atlanta. But nobody knew where in Atlanta. We waited in one line for almost an hour. And when we were almost to the front some rude lady in mannish pants and bad shoes told us we were in the WRONG line because Atlanta was our final destination and that line was for people whose luggage was lost before they reached their final destination and I was all “But you don’t even KNOW your luggage is lost until you get where you’re going and its not there with you”. But all she did was punch a few buttons and hand us a “case number” and tell us to have a nice day.
When we finally pulled into our driveway at 2:00 a.m. I was tired. Hungry. Grouchy. Sad. And wanted my damn hairbrush (Nevermind that not ONCE have I EVER brushed my hair before going to bed. But now that the option was taken away from me, it was all I could think about.) We ate some food in bed and then passed the fuck out.
The next morning I dragged my ass into work at the bright and early hour of 10:30 and proceeded to get on the phone and track down my hairbrush. The good news is that our bags found their way to Augusta rather quickly. The bad news? APPARENTLY I was supposed to just magically know that I needed to call and schedule them to be delivered to me. And NOBODY WAS ANSWERING THE PHONE. Which meant? That I was going to have to drive to the Augusta airport after work and convince someone to give me my damn bags.
Which I did. And I apologize to all of you who have read this wretched excuse for a post. And I ESPECIALLY apologize to Zube and Bonanza as they’ve already heard all of this on the phone. Tomorrow? Something shorter. Maybe getting hammered with my sister. Or maybe just some damn pictures so I will just SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP.
