Last night my SO informed me that he had left three month’s worth of paperwork in the seat pocket of the plane he took from Detroit to DC. His flight the day before had been cancelled, he’d had to spend the night in Detroit and was getting in to DC 30 minutes before a meeting he had to be at. He was in such a hurry to deplane that he simply overlooked it. When he discovered it was missing, he sent off an email to the airline. He was convinced…CONVINCED…there was not a chance in hell he’d see that thick plastic packet again. He was very depressed by this…I told him I thought there was a good chance the cleaners would find it and turn it in. It was a huge file…not a few random sheets. He told me I was naive.
This morning, he called me from the airport in DC, and I asked him if he had checked with Lost and Found. He said no, he’d not gotten a reply to his email. I said…“Did you ask anyone? Ask the gate agent to check?” He said no, repeated the “not a chance in hell” line and then, just to appease me while I was on the line, he asked the gate agent if anything had been turned in. They called Lost and Found…nothing. But the agent decided to check at all the surrounding gates to see if anything was stashed underneath. He didn’t know what gate he had come in at…I told him they could look that up for him. He told me she didn’t find anything, and we hung up.
I get my shower, and I have a clear vision of a flight attendant walking down the aisle to him and handing him the file folder.
Ten minutes ago he calls me after landing in Detroit. The gate agent had gone and searched all the rest of the check-in stands…and found his papers. And walked on to the plane and handed them to him just moments before the plane took off. He was so relieved! And now I am, too! And he promises he won’t call me naive again! And if he hadn’t called to wake me up, and then tried to appease me by asking while I was listening over the phone…LOL!
I did not resist the urge to say I TOLD YOU SO!
That’s my happy news for the day! Anything good happen to you that you were convinced would never happen?
Last summer my wife was walking between two buildings on university campus, about a half-mile apart. After returning home later in the day she realized that somewhere along the way during that walk, she had dropped her flash drive. Several hours had passed, and it was a lot of ground to cover, so we didn’t hold out much hope of finding it. Still, I went back to campus with her, and we retraced her steps. I kept scanning a good ten feet to either side of our route, and finally, near the end, I spotted a glint of metal under a bush in some landscaping. Turned out to be her flash drive, which had survived being kicked under the bushes by someone; accident or intentional, don’t know. Either way, she was glad to have it back.
If you’re looking for a tough-bastard flash drive, check out the Corsair Survivor line. That’s what hers was (my mom got one for her, me and my siblings for Xmas a couple of years ago), and I expect that helped it tolerate whatever abuse it absorbed before we found it.
I lost my luggage over the Thanksgiving break going to Colorado. My entire family was convinced I’d never see it again, that people would steal it, etc.
I flew out Wednesday. They had it at the local airport on Friday.
I once worked an assignment at a big corporate campus and somehow managed to drop $18 dollars on the ground walking between the cafeteria and my building. I was convinced that the “finders keepers” rule would apply, but when I checked with security, somebody had turned it in.
I ran my flash drive through the laundry one time. Pulled it out and it still works. Totally wasn’t expecting that.
And I once left my phone on a Mississauga bus… went to the lost-and-found the next day and they had it! Really wasn’t expecting that.
I left $800 in cash and some credit cards in a hotel safe in Argentina. I never expected to see it again, but after about a month and a bunch of phone calls I got all of it back except what it cost them to send it.
I left a pair of binoculars on the grounds of an outdoor concert venue. I was quite bummed, because there were a gift from my father and I had quite a sentimental attachment to them, but I called the ticket office a few days later and someone had turned them in.