Writing the Saga of the High and the Forgetful

The equation is elementary: You foul up, you pay. The dumber the error, the harder the fall. Crime and punishment. That’s the way our world works.

Still, it’s no fun when it happens to you.

Especially in an airplane at 30,000 feet over western Oregon. Talk about terror in the skies.

After a one-week Alaskan cruise this summer my family and I spent the next week visiting relatives in Eugene, Ore. At last the Saturday arrived when we had to come home to Los Angeles.

No problem.

We arrived at the Eugene airport an hour before our flight but my wife and I and our 3-year-old son weren’t given our boarding passes until three minutes before departure time. Fearing that we would be left behind, we bid a hasty farewell to our relatives, ran through the terminal, tossed our three carry-on bags and my wife’s purse onto the security X-ray machine’s conveyor belt and stepped through the magnetometer.

No problem.

Our carry-on bags came out of the security machine and, because we were the last passengers for that flight, the conveyor belt stopped. We grabbed our bags and sprinted for the plane.

No problem.

We scrambled into our row, stashed our carry-on luggage under the seats in front of us and buckled up our seat belts. I was just reaching for the in-flight magazine when my wife started squirming around in her seat as if she had been bitten by a bee.

Big problem.

“My purse,” she yelled. “I can’t find my purse.”

Her Purse Wasn’t There

My wife stood up to see if she were sitting on her purse. She wasn’t. She asked me, then our son, to stand up to see if one of us was sitting on it. We weren’t. She rummaged among our three carry-on bags to see if it was there. It wasn’t.

At that instant she put two and two together and came up with an awful conclusion: The fourth carry-on item--her purse--was still in the X-ray machine in the airport terminal. She clutched my arm. She was white as a sheet.

The plane began taxiing down the runway, and the male flight attendants went into their demonstrations of what to do in case of an emergency . . . oblivious to the drama unfolding in Row 13, Seat B.

My wife stood up, again, to see, I suppose, if somehow she might have overlooked the purse somewhere in the corner of her seat. No luck. Then she made me stand up again so we could check my seat, as if I wouldn’t know if I were sitting on a purse big enough to contain a football. Clearly, the woman had lost control.

She punched the buzzer for a flight attendant. One came, smiling, cheerful, unsuspecting.

“Excuse me,” my wife said, in a voice somewhere between a shout and a shriek. “We have a problem.”

The attendant stopped smiling. Problem was not a word he wanted to hear as the plane prepared for takeoff.

“I believe I left my purse in the airport,” my wife continued. “Can we go back and get it?”

The attendant blinked.

“Please,” my wife pleaded.

The attendant sighed, then patiently explained that the airplane was holding for takeoff, so he would radio back to the terminal to see if someone could bring the purse out to the plane.

It sounded crazy but we hoped that it would work.

Away They Go

We relaxed. We talked about how nice, how concerned, how comforting the attendant had been. We felt confident that our troubles were over. We’d have that darned purse in our hands any second now.

Then the pilot gunned the engines and the plane roared down the runaway.

A cold sweat came over me as we became airborne, for now it was obvious that no matter how cheerful we tried to be about the situation, the purse was in Eugene while we were winging it to the Burbank airport.

To grasp the full impact of the moment you need to realize what was in that purse. Besides chewing gum and headache pills, the purse contained magic, freedom, happiness and validation; it held, for our family, the essence of life--namely, both sets of car and house keys, both sets of identification papers and credit cards and most of our remaining vacation cash ($69). Without the purse, all we had were the airplane tickets in her hand and the $4 in my pocket.

Not a good feeling.

The attendant reappeared and handed us a note bearing good news and bad news: Yes, the purse had been found and would be sent to Burbank on another flight--one that would arrive about five hours after we did.

We sighed. I turned inward--to logic and deep analysis.

By an earlier agreement a friend was scheduled to meet us at the airport to take us to our house. But without keys, how were we to get inside? Mentally, I pictured every window and door and concocted ways of breaking in. But in the end I saw no easy entrance, shy of taking a crowbar to a door or a brick to a window.

Sometime between the departure from the terminal and the arrival of the complimentary soft drinks I got a vision of our future: Our life was about to become sheer hell.

How to Kill Time

Our friend was waiting at the airport and she offered to let us kill the time until the flight arrived with the purse at her house. Which is what we did.

Five hours later we went back to the airport and retrieved the purse. Simple, right? Of course not. Fate had us by the throat and wasn’t about to let go.

The airline crew in Eugene had disguised the purse by putting it into a large cardboard box. (Nice move, we cheered.) And no charge, either. (Neat deal, we applauded.)

But the Eugene crew, apparently fearing that our cash might be stolen, removed the money and put it into their safe, giving us a receipt for $69 in American money and $9.70 in Canadian money. (Smart move, we agreed.)

But when we asked the airline manager in Burbank for our money, he looked puzzled. He’d never heard of such an arrangement. Our hearts sank. He said he’d make some calls. Time passed. At last he reported that he had called the Eugene office but it was closed. We’d have to check back on Monday.

On Monday my wife called. She was told that our money would be sent to us--and, it was, three weeks and many phone calls (to the airline offices in Burbank, Eugene and San Diego) later.

The story stops--but does not end--here. Unfortunately.

Not all of the money was sent--only the American part. Every day I go through the mail in the hope that the Canadian money (or its American equivalent) will be there. For four months I have been doing that. Perhaps this is someone’s cruel way of reminding us that if you foul up, you pay.