Like I said, you’ve got (my) baggage

Once I arrived home and the no baggage situation hit home (literally), I started to realize how much I had lost. My two main priorities were:

 

1) my retainers

2) my recently attained maple whiskey

 

Everything else could be replaced but replacing these items would be problematic.

 

I had braces over twenty years ago and lost my retainer some time in between now and then. About 11 years ago I begged my insurance company to approve a new top and bottom retainer. My begging paid off and my orthodontist made a new set for me. The new trend was putting stickers on them, so MiniMe selected a villain for the top retainer and butterflies for the bottom. A year later, my orthodontist died.

 

A dead orthodontist and a tough insurance plan make replacing retainers (with cool stickers) very difficult. Having no baggage just got costly for me.

 

I live in a place where getting any sort of specialty alcohol can prove cumbersome. Thus, if my maple whiskey, I mean baggage, is not found I stand a chance of not tasting it or something like it until I travel again. Translation: I’ll have to wait at least a month or so. First world problems are like alcohol, major depressants.

 

About 12 hours after not retrieving my baggage and not hearing from the airport I decided to take matters into my own hands and return to the airport for a follow-up investigation.

 

My longing for straight teeth and sweet spirits proved fruitful. A baggage service representative allowed me to peruse the bags in custody, I identified my baggage doppelganger (the same old bag with the tags that was left on the carousel the night prior), and we called the owner.

 

“Hello, just checking to make sure you have all of your luggage?”
“Yes, we have all of our bags.”
“All of them?”

“Yes, all of them.”

“Have you opened any of them?”
“No.”
“Do you mind opening the small black carry-on and checking the contents.”
“Oh, my, this isn’t our bag.”

 

I knew it. Some old bag has my black bag.