Baggage Claims

If you've followed my career in comedy you'll find I seem to spend a lot of time talking about the baggage carousel, the lamest of all types of carousels which lacks both colourful, ridable animals, and organ music.

The baggage carousel is that moment of truth, that time when we discover whether we'll be wearing our carefully planned wardrobe for the duration of the trip, or whether we'll be sporting the ill fitting tourist trap t-shirts with the graphic that leads one to believe the shirt was commissioned back in the early to mid 1980s, you know, when people we're to busy worrying about the red menace and to coked up to care about simple things like taste.

And so if you've ever been out to see me perform stand-up you've probably heard me rant about the fear induced by this particularly slow moving device.

In fact just last February I wrote and directed a short film about about this very topic (Baggage, starring Evan Brandon and Kristen Dealy).

Now I've never had my luggage lost, although I thought I did once on a red eye home from California. I was incorrect, or so the airline informed me, my bag wasn't lost, they were only 'temporarily delayed.'

Temporarily delayed? So what, my bag was going to join me in Toronto but something important came up and it'll be with me at its soonest, most available time?

This isn't a story about my bag having scheduling conflicts, nor a story about my film or my stand-up. No, this is the story about how I met my girlfriends father.

We'll start at the end and work our way back, Momento style...

The End

As I am standing there, trying to identify the shape of my suitcase from the suitcase lineup diagram the woman trapped in the lost luggage cubbyhole has handed me, my girlfriend taps me on the shoulder.

She's standing there with her dad, a suitcase between them.

"Derek, this is your bag," she informs me.

"Ha, where did that come from?" I ask the father, the daughter, and the woman whose midwest accent almost hides the fact she hates her job.


My Girlfriend's Version of Proceeding Events

Okay, so if you believe my girlfriend Amanda (and I am by no means encouraging you to, please wait till my version of the story for a plausible explanation) here's how it all went down.

We stood there, waiting on my bag, slowly everyone around us got theres, but not me. From time to time a strange looking dark green suitcase would rotate by.

"Is that yours?" Amanda asked.

"Are you sure it's not yours?" She asked the second time around.

"Derek, we should at least check this one," the third pass.

Now I know my suitcase, I am familiar with its look, design, and shade of green. This was not it. I wasn't going to humour her by checking, risk the actual owner running at me convinced I was stealing his luggage.

Soon it was just the two of us and another guy further down the carousel. Why he wasn't taking his dark green bag I don't know. And where was my slightly smaller light green bag?

"Let's just check this one..." my girlfriend was saying, or something similar. I didn't fully hear as I was wandering up to the cubbyhole window to discuss with the woman on duty the case of my missing bag.

In the background Amanda was on the phone to her father Jeff, who had been waiting in the parking lot to give us a ride.

"Hey dad, we're still at baggage claim, Derek thinks they lost his bag."

Meanwhile the woman at the counter was busy dealing with me, "it shows on the computer that all of the luggage from that flight has been loaded onto the carousel." Her voice was half matter-of-fact, half pleading with the universe that this wasn't something that would lead to her filling out more paperwork.

As the woman and I began to discuss the case of my missing suitcase Jeff showed up to get the scoop from his daughter.

"Derek is pretty sure they lost his suitcase."

"What about that one right there?" Jeff asked at the dark green suitcase which was so clearly not mine.

"That's what I keep saying, but Derek says its not."

At this point Amanda grabs for the suitcase, pulling it off she checks the tag.

As I am standing there, trying to identify the shape of my suitcase from the suitcase lineup diagram the woman trapped in the lost luggage cubbyhole has handed me, my girlfriend taps me on the shoulder.

She's standing there with her dad, a suitcase between them.

"Derek, this is your bag," she informs me.

"Ha, where did that come from?" I ask the father, the daughter, and the woman whose midwest accent almost hides the fact she hates her job.

What Really Happened (aka Derek's Version of Events)

I've landed in Minneapolis, Minnesota to meet my girlfriends family. I am waiting for the seatbelt sign to go off so that I can get out of my chair and gracefully hit my head on the above storage compartment.

So now I wasn't there, so I cannot be 100% sure about the following events, but this is what I've pieced together.

A guy with earmuffs and a bright orange vest, possibly two of them, unloads the suitcases. My slightly smaller, slightly lighter green suitcase is still there at this point. I don't believe these vest wearers to be in on the take.

They load everything up onto their little car and one of them drives off with it.

Now there's probably another guy who handles placing the luggage onto the conveyor belt, the guy who drives the little buggy is probably not aloud to help, a union thing. So here's a guy who controls the flow of the luggage, and he's all alone.

Now I cannot say for certain his motives, as I have never met this dastardly man, yet here is what I have deduced.

At some point this man lost or damaged his own suitcase, one his wife gave him as a gift, yes it wasn't the most romantic of gifts but he needed a suitcase, he had been hinting and hinting, and so she got him one. But now it was lost and/or stolen.

As fate would have it my suitcase was a deadringer for his. All his dread about the wife finding out was put on hold, if he could just bring this one home no one would know.

But then he would be doing a disservice to the actual owner of the bag.

Thinking fast he grabbed another suitcase, a darker green, a little bit larger. He took everything out of it, not thinking of the fact that he was now robbing someone else of their suitcase (the other guy waiting further down the conveyor perhaps!), he put all of my stuff in before transferring my name tag to it.

'My' suitcase went down the conveyor, shooting out onto the carousel.

We stood there, waiting on my bag, slowly everyone around us got theres, but not me. From time to time a strange looking dark green suitcase would rotate by.

"Is that yours?" Amanda asked.

"Are you sure it's not yours?" She asked the second time around.

"Derek, we should at least check this one," the third pass.

Conclusion

I know what you're thinking, how could I know this? Well I drove for several hours with my girlfriend and her father, several hours from the airport, hearing the whole way about how I didn't know my own bag, how I should trust my girlfriend. Several hours of time to think and figure out what really happened at that baggage claim...

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