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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Pack Rat Den-Aisle

I find myself traveling at least once a month these days, living out of a suitcase and being suckered into buying a shot glass with my name and a drawing of a local landmark on it. I’m not really sure who these novelty name items are targeted at, maybe people who suffer from random bouts of amnesia?

“Hmm, if this keychain in my pocket is correct my name must be Derek, now if only I had an overpriced coffee mug with my address on it.”

Unlike most people I enjoy the generic hotels, the three hour layovers at the airport, or rationing peanuts to last the length of the in-flight movie. For the sake of full disclosure I also enjoy the smell of tar, so there may be something slightly off about me.

This is not to say I am always immune to the discomforts of travel.

Now a lot of comedians and humourists have tackled the lack of leg room, and while this well worn topic is one we can all relate to, who hasn’t lost feeling in their legs by the time to captain turns off the seatbelt sign? And who hasn’t had the passenger in front of us recline his seat, allowing our tray table to double as a corset?

But leg room is nothing compared to the threat of the Tenant Traveler.

You may not recognize this pesky brand of passenger from name alone, so let me relate a story that happened to me not to long ago.

I had requested an aisle seat and wound up at a window, proving once again that the request seat button is about as effective as the button pedestrian’s like to pretend turns the light to ‘Walk’ faster (in fact the crosswalk buttons were disconnected sometime in the 80s when computer algorithms took over traffic control, not that this effects you. I’m sure if you continue to pound on it three or four more times the light will change, honest.)

The trip though started comfortably enough, despite the comedic cliché urge I’ll admit the leg room wasn’t bad and there was a seat between me and the woman on the aisle.

I settled in, turning my iPod up to a level that’d block out my fellow travelers while not loud enough to reveal some of my guiltier of music pleasures to the U.S.A. Woman’s Volleyball team seated behind me. Not that I am ashamed of anything in my music collection, I just didn’t want them throwing a game to Chile because they are to busy laughing at the curly haired guy on the plane who was listening to Was (Not Was)’s Walk the Dinosaur. You’re welcome Team U.S.A.

It wasn’t till around the time the in-flight movie started up - presumably something starring Mark Wahlberg or Pierce Brosnan as I can’t recall the last flight I took without one of them making up the trip’s entertainment - it wasn’t until then that the harmless woman sharing the row with me began to reveal her true colours.

She began by pulling out a bright assortment of celebrity lined magazines, apparently the only way to get fair and balanced coverage on the latest star’s divorce is to cross-reference between five different tabloids. An innocent action in and of itself, everyone likes something to flip through while traveling, but it didn’t stop there.

She started pulling out several juice boxes, an assortment of snacks.

Uh-oh, I thought as her tray table began to resemble a Vegas buffet.

Then came the electronics, the 1990s Sony Walk-Man, the laptop. Several tapes (Wikipedia the words ‘Compact Cassette’ kids, sorry to get all old on you), then a large hardcover book followed, tucked away into the now bulging seat pocket in front of her.

She was one of them, a nester, a Tenant Traveler.

I began to think about how horrible it would be to have to get up to go to the bathroom, to have to navigate my way through the woman’s home entertainment system in what under could conditions barely amounted to enough space for me to shimmy sideways… while it’d just be a complete disaster.

Sure enough moments after crossing my mind the need hit me. She was in the midst of pulling out a small pillow and a blanket from the bag she must’ve bought second-hand off Felix the Cat and suddenly all I could think about was my need to get to the bathroom.

She had set her little three hour and forty minute home and it was smack between me and the aisle.

I tried fighting it.

On screen Marky Mark (sorry again kids) appeared to be pouting about something in the rain, he wasn’t helping anything.

Like the Cidiot I am I sat there out of my depths, though I had faced her type before I had never figured out whether to let them know I needed to go by, waiting fifteen more bladder pained minutes as they packed up their camping supplies, or whether to charge like a bull, letting Pringles and Us Weekly’s land where they may.

The thought crossed my mind to open the emergency exit door beside me and go the long way around… ah yes, the emergency exit row, now you know why I wasn’t complaining about leg room.

Finally I couldn’t take it any longer, I stood up (or as up as a plane will allow you) to let the woman know I needed to go by. With a look best described as disgust she acknowledged me, bundling as much stuff as she could into her arms she made her way to the aisle, staring at me, seeing if I could somehow turn to rubber and bend my way around the tray table between the aisle and me.

I shuffled my way towards salvation, a maneuver that lasted about two seconds before I tripped on the bag she had left on the floor, staggering I sent a package of two-bite brownies flying across the aisle.

Getting my bearings again I stood up to take in the fact the volleyball team had chosen to watch me lurch around over Pierce Brosnan windsurfing.

Regaining my composure I made it to the aisle as the woman opened the overhead compartment, suddenly a jacket dropped from above, covering me in darkness. Startled I let out a scream, whipping the jacket from across my face and tossing it at a businessman. A few giggles filled the cabin.

Red faced I walked towards the back of the plane, convinced every eye was following me on my way by.

When I returned to my seat she had neatly arranged all her worldly possessions, she looked up at me, back down at her stuff, and then sighed. Across the aisle out of the corner of my eye I think I saw the business man covering his face.

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