Things I’ve Lost… Or Not

I cannot count the times I’ve proclaimed aloud to myself, to friends, to family that I’m going to draft a nasty letter of complaint. It happens at least twice per year.

This fall my pet gripes were held against Delta (spilling something fishy on our luggage, mishandling delayed baggage, mismanaging cancellations) and Target (lousy service, rude personnel). I went so far as to add a task into my task list, but I never got around to it…

Perhaps I would have been more on top of the task if I had a PDA to remind me of my duties. But, as you may recall from my last journal, I left my PocketPC PDA in Seat 4D during a flight from San Juan to Boston. Although I never wrote a letter of complaint on the subject, I mentioned it in an online survey. Somebody from American called me to chat about my complaint. He apologized and gave me 1,000 bonus miles.

Frequent fliers are prima donnas. We think that the world stops to admire as we pass and that airline personnel should literally fall to the feet and kiss our feet. We feel entitled to express lines through security and getting our luggage first in the claim area. We expect that policies such as “we will only call if we find your lost item” do not apply to us. That’s what had me riled up, much more than the actual loss of the device…

Last weekend, Normal Girl was conducting some January-cleaning.

“That’s disgusting,” she said.

“What?”

“Dust bunnies under the couch.”

“Um, okay,” I said. “Then don’t look under there.”

She retrieved a hand-held vacuum from the closet. “Can we push the couch back?” We did, exposing a gray bail of aggregated dust. And one black neoprene case containing a genuine Dell PDA.

“Hey, look what I found,” she said.

Whoops! At least I didn’t write a scathing letter….