My luggage arrived last night just before midnight, or almost a day and a half late. I had arranged with the manager of the Men’s Wearhouse here in Cleveland that if it didn’t arrive by midnight, I would be on his doorstep bright and early the next a.m. and he personally would fit me and get my new purchases tailored in time for the wedding and in preparation of my pursuing Southworst Airlines for the full amount. Now that won’t be necessary.

When the bag was first missing, I said to my son and to the first of the four baggage mishandling agents I dealt with, “I think someone else took it by accident.” My son agreed — it is, after all, a rectangular black roller bag, one of about 900 that rolled off our plane — but the baggage mishandlers didn’t think that was plausible. I think the reason for their skepticism is this: this would be akin to admitting a different form of fault, because while claim tickets are issued for each piece of luggage you check, no one checks them against the baggage before handing them out. Why not? To expedite the process — and save money. We all like low-cost airfare, so to some degree we’re all culpable for this situation, but given that I’ve had a baggage problem twice in a row now I’m starting to think I wouldn’t mind a small surcharge. (Either that, or eliminate the ridiculous fear-mongering Bush/Cheney-originated dictum that one can’t travel with more than 3 oz. of liquid or lotion, which is what forced me into checking a bag in the first place.) Last night, after setting forth a plan of action for myself (if no luggage by midnight, then new wardrobe in the morning) and therefore feeling empowered and therefore feeling better, a helpful Southworst baggage agent named Jennifer left me a voicemail saying that my bag had been found and would be delivered. What had been the problem? While they were theoretically scouring the system from Fairbanks to Freeport looking for one of a jillion black roller bags, a “confused elderly lady” took mine by accident and had just returned it. In other words, precisely what I had said in the first place. The bag arrived and I opened it for inspection, wondering if the confused elderly lady had picked through my frillies. My son wondered if there would be “old lady smell.” (He’s 16.) Everything seemed fine, and we enjoyed the remainder of our evening in downtown Cleveland and made arrangements to join my brother and his family and my 82-year-old mother and the rest of our family this morning.

Then my brother called, about 40 minutes ago. My mother’s plane had arrived. But the airline lost her luggage.

The wedding’s tomorrow.

This entry was posted on Friday, July 6th, 2007 at 8:36 am and is filed under Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.