Richard’s new guilty pleasure is
Hulu’s “Inside Airport Lost and Found” which focuses on objects left behind. When there is unclaimed luggage security is
contacted to bring a dog to sniff the luggage.
The story unfold with an entire set unclaimed bags that had been setting
in said destination for over ten minutes.
Ten minutes?
I recall returning home from my
mission. I don’t remember the airline – Continental
I think. I was the only sister
missionary who was returning. When we
landed in Atlanta our connecting flight was just one gate over – but we had
time to ride the shuttle and so got on it just for fun. The holdup happened in
Denver as I recall. I don’t remember the
exact number of elders who were on the plane with me. We had missed our connecting flight and had
to be rescheduled or else the plane was running late or something. One plane was overbooked. They asked for volunteers to take another
flight and were bribed with tickets for future plans.
I recall one elder wanting to take
the opportunity and another counseling him not to since the tickets were
arranged by the church and not the individual.
Turns out they wouldn’t have worked for said bribe anyway.
Meanwhile families had turned out
to welcome back their missionaries. This
was back in 1986 when families could wait at the gates. Mom said it appeared that the entire ward of
someone had turned out. When passengers
started to disembark the crowd waited.
They waited and waited. When the
flight attendants followed by the pilots disembarked one of the family members
who’d been anxiously waiting for his missionary turned to the crowd and implied
that his son was some kind of jokester and we were all still aboard the plane. But we were not. They had a LONG wait.
My sister was hungry – everybody was
hungry. But Shelly was the only one
willing to eat lentil soup which (at the time) was the least expensive thing on
the menu. People left. How much longer would they have to wait
around. There were inquiries – where are
the missionaries who should have arrived.
Some calls were made and some names were given. I think there may have been six elders coming
home – but I don’t know if all were by way of Salt Lake City. Regardless, they had the names of whoever was
supposed to arrive. They had all the
names of the elders but not the sister.
So of course my mom seemed to panic.
Where was I?
I arrived an hour and a half later
with the number of missionaries headed to Utah.
My luggage didn’t seem to be on the carrousel so I told my family that
we could go eat and just return for my luggage the next morning. It was well over ten minutes. Probably over twelve hours before I even
called the airport to ask about the luggage.
I was asked
about the color of my luggage.
Blue. Like how many possible blue
pieces could there be? 500? 1000.
I remember explaining to someone that I had come on Continental whatever
number it was. He said he remembered
seeing it in the United terminal.
How? What? How could you possibly know those bags were
mine out of the many pieces of luggage you much see each hour? but that I had
initially been scheduled to fly United. We
all had. But the elders’ luggage had
been transferred to Continental. Mine
had remained with United which is why there wasn’t a record of me being on Continental.
I was
grateful that I hadn’t stuck around to pick up my luggage with another 30
minute to how many hours later? I was impressed with the knowledge that this individual
had regarding my luggage. Perhaps it had
been reported and that’s how he knew. As
I recall I did have to pick it up at the United unclaimed luggage and show
proof that it was mine. I hadn’t thought
about that until just this very second.
Did the airport have dog security back then?
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