I am in a tiny airport just outside Paris.
I was just informed by an inordinately pissy French check-in guy that my bag is too large to carry on.
This bag has been carried on in London, Ireland, Scotland, Venice, Palermo, Portugal, Berlin, Prague, a tiny little town in the South of France, and the US of Freaking A.
It weighs significantly less than the average American newborn.
He informs me that the weight limit for carryon bags is ten kilos. My bag weighs eleven and a half. That’s about twenty six pounds, and it’s everything I need to live comfortably for months.
It also doesn’t quite fit into the little box they use to check for size.
He goes on to tell me that it will cost twenty euro to have unidentified hairy men stomp my belongings into a paste.
Ryanair, of course, cannot guarantee my ever seeing my bag again, or that said hairy men will not actually urinate on my things.
“I guess I’ll just get rid of some of this,” I say.
My left eyelid starts to twitch.
“Give me my passport. Now.”
Here’s tricky part. When I travel, I travel light. I’ve always figured that I’ll hate all of my clothes by the end of the trip anyway, so why lug around more? So my bag is pared down to absolute necessities and a few souvenirs, which I routinely leave with my friend Jon when I route through London.
There is nothing to throw away.
I pace up and down the airport concourse, trying to think my way out of this. Twenty euros is about thirty dollars right now, and while I could pay it, something inside me balks.
I’m gonna beat this pissy little French guy.
I begin by scanning the people waiting in the airport restaurant, trying to find someone who looks like they’ll watch my laptop, my heaviest possession, while I check in.
I settle on two guys who look like they fought in Nam. They have aggressively long white beards, Harley paraphernalia, and look like they might be concealing ear necklaces.
They also look like they’re willing to Stick it to the Man.
With knives.
“Er, hey,” I say, trying not to look shifty.
“Um, I’m trying to check in, and my bag is, like, a kilo over? So I was wondering if one of you might watch my laptop while I…”
One of them (the one with the longest beard) grunts, and with a creak of leather, shifts over in his seat towards me.
“They say we’re not supposed to do that kind of thing,” he says, giving me a Sincere Look.
“Um, well, yeah they do,” I say.
(I am hoping, at this moment, that he is the reigning Master of Irony.)
“And on that basis, I’m gonna say no.”
(He is not.)
“Fair enough.”
So I continue to pace, my eyelid twitch speeding up, unable to imagine leading a life where pissy little French men are permitted to commit extortion.
And then I have it.
I’ll throw it away.
I run into the spacious baby changing bathroom, and look around wildly. There are three amusingly complicated garbage cans ranged against the walls. One of them has teeth, apparently for grinding used diapers into some kind of horrible mulch.
They’re all too small for my laptop, but they’re also really light plastic. So I scoot one about an inch out from the wall, and pop my computer behind it.
I start to panic as soon as I get in the check-in line.
But its okay, I remind myself. Most people are way too polite to ever use the baby changing toilet, and there are only about five people ahead of me.
(Sigh)
I really ask for it, don’t I?
The woman in front of me is secretly a scout for a family of about seven Italians. Instead of waiting in line with her, they have sent an emissary. When she gets to the head of the line, it’s just… stupid. The various family members start popping up from behind us, all gesturing wildly at the stack of passports the bewildered check-in girl[1] was holding. Four or five random Italians would appear, then a few would wander off, then another guy showed up, left, and started shouting. This continued for about ten minutes, with an ever-changing blob of Italians, while I got increasingly concerned that some diaper-changing woman had just hit the baby changing jackpot. It got to the point where the check-in girl would just wave a passport above her head, furiously pointing at a picture. Someone from the back of the line who vaguely resembled the picture would wave a hand above the melee, and holler something in Italian. The check-in girl would sort of shrug, type something into her terminal, roll her eyes, and go on to the next.
When it was finally my turn, I was a mess. The pissy little French guy was working just one line over, I’d “hidden” my liquids in a plastic bag under my dinner, and somewhere, a biker dude thought I was going to blow up a plane.
Plus I’d been acting suspicious as Hell.
My bag weighs in at eight kilos, and falls through the metal grating of the bag size box. I’m in.
I find my laptop where I’ve left it, and slide through security.
The moral here is simple: If you ever find yourself in a spacious airport bathroom, look behind the garbage cans. Especially if they have teeth.
And the pissy little French guy?
Screw him.
(Yeah!)
[1] I was in another line. For
some reason.