One of modern life’s great moments of anticipation: the luggage carousel, that familiar, “will they, or won’t they?” game your brain plays with you as you wait for your bags. You watch everyone else pluck their intended from the line and move on, to carry on with their lives. Sometimes, you’re one of them – one of the Lucky Ones. 

And sometimes, you stand alone, beside nothing, pre-mourning your stuff. An Unlucky One.

Yesterday, I was an Unlucky One. I waited patiently, at a carousel that was unloading two flights. I watched everyone from my flight leave. 

Head down in remorse, I went to the Baggage Claim Office. 

My luggage, in it’s desire to see the world, had decided not to disembark the plane. It decided to carry on to the next destination. 

Customer Service assured that me, if, someone at the next destination read the report she just issued, my bag would get back to me around 10pm. If not, definitely the next day. 

“I’m travelling to Sydney tomorrow, if the bag doesn’t make it by then, what happens?”

“We can send it to Sydney, you would just have to pick it up at the airport.”

Okay. She handed me a WhatsApp number and told me they would text me if they heard anything. 

Problem was, my bag was a bag without a name. The systems were down in Mulu, so, unable to print luggage tags, they just wrote on the destination (Miri) on a piece of paper, “MYY”. So, my bag was untrackable. It was basically single and ready to mingle. 

I, on the other hand, was single and ready for a shower. My brain immediately went to thoughts of “how long will these smelly, dried-sweat filled clothes last – will they make it 24hrs?”, “Will they make it onto the next plane? And if they do, will the people next to me start to complain about holding their nose for eight hours?” Without my luggage I was a stinky-time bomb that no one would want on a plane. 

Like most things, you don’t realize what you had, till it’s gone. But, like a good relationship, a break doesn’t necessarily mean a break-up. 

At 10pm my bag showed up, looking a little naughty – but hey, what happens in Cargo Hold, stays in Cargo Hold.