100 Megatons in Your Pocket
I plan to post about the rest of my trip to the UK later, when my readjustment to Pacific Time isn’t weighing quite so heavily on me, but for now I just have to relate an amusing anecdote about the return flight. You see, those who have traveled with me know that I am fated to lose at least one expensive, electronic device every time I travel (I once left a MiniDisc player on the streets of Paris and a digital camera in an Edinburgh taxi), and this time was no exception. As I was getting ready for bed on my first night back home, I suddenly realized, to my horror, that I had misplaced my beloved iPod!
I knew the only place I could have left it was in the pocket of the seat in front of me on my flight home, so I spent the next day calling British Airways at SFO every hour on the hour, hoping that one of the flight attendants had found it and turned it in. Since no one at the BA Baggage Office answers the phone, however, it quickly became apparent that I would have to head up there in person.
When I actually visited the baggage office this afternoon, I was all prepared to explain to the clerk what an iPod looks like, so it really took me by surprise when, upon hearing the mere word “iPod,” the guy looked at me curiously and said “Oh, you’re the iPod guy.” He informed me that they had placed my iPod in the safe upstairs, and that I should go to the ticket desk to collect it.
Thrilled that I was going to be getting my iPod back, I sprinted back up to the departures area and waited patiently to talk to a BA representative. When one of the women finally acknowledged me, she had almost the same reaction as the guy downstairs: “Oh, yes, we’ve all heard all about the iPod!”
She finally directed me to her supervisor, the only person who could open the safe. The supervisor brought me the iPod, but asked an unusual number of questions before handing it back to me (What does it do? How does it work?), which I took to be genuine (if somewhat odd) curiosity about the technology.
It wasn’t until I had a chance to actually examine my iPod’s case that I began to understand the BA staff’s curious behaviour. The iPod was still perfectly functional, but the metal back no longer fit snugly onto the white plastic front on the left side, as if someone had attempted to pry the enclosure open with a knife. At first I wondered if some electronically curious airport employee had decided to dissect the thing, but then it hit me: in the wake of terrorist threats that delayed a Washinton-bound BA flight for five days, some flight attendant must have caused an incident by mistaking my iPod for a bomb! I guess I’m probably just lucky that the poor thing didn’t meet its end in a controlled explosion!
I think Boromir summed the situation up perfectly in Fellowship of the Ring: “It is a strange fate that we should suffer so much fear and doubt over so small a thing.” I guess that’s life in the post 9/11 era…