06 January 2011

Bag Check Game Show

Every year when I go to Missouri for the holidays, Mom and I hit the thrift shops for clothes and we hit Half Price Books.  I love HPB.  Not only are the books at least half-price, but between Christmas and New Year's Eve, everything in the store is an additional 20% off.  Plus, they have DVDs, CDs, calendars... what's not to love?  It's a huge store with books of every genre imaginable.  Needless to say, every year, I come back with suitcases much heavier than they were when I left Philadelphia.

This year was a little different.  Not only did we hit up the thrift shops and HPB, but my mom had gone through her closet and cleaned out all of her clothes that she no longer wanted, not longer fit her, or that she thought I might want.  So I had those to go through, too.  I made out pretty okay there, too.

Oh, and did I mention that I also get my birthday presents from my family while I'm there, too?  The first year I have moved here, I had brought back the wrapped presents, and I opened them while Mom was on the phone.  But (1) that was just sad and depressing and (2) now TSA would not be happy with us if we did that.  So, yeah - heavy suitcases.

Now, Mom usually has a postal scale that we can use before we head to the airport so we can tell if my luggage is over the 50-pound limit (she uses the scale for weighing her eBay store packages).  But it's been finicky lately, so she didn't want to risk completely angering it with my massive suitcases.  Last year, her scale said we really close, so we took an extra tote bag to the airport just in case the airport scale didn't agree with her scale (since unloading the suitcase and paying USPS to ship a small box to me would be MUCH cheaper than paying the overweight baggage fee).

We got to the baggage check-in counter, and - moment of truth.  I knew the red bag was the heavier of the two, so I had Dale heave that bag onto the scale first... 53 pounds.  Oops.  Okay.  We confirm with the woman that we would have to pay the fee for those extra three pounds, and she says we unfortunately would.  We make Dale take the red bag off the scale and put the grey bag on to be weighed ... (insert drum roll here) ... 45 pounds.  We ask the woman if we can exchange the load at the counter or if we need to step back.  She says we can do it at the counter.

VERY aware that there is a line of people behind us waiting to check in and get on their flights, Mom and I spring into action.  We basically shove poor Dale out of the way (after he's been slinging bags around for us) as Mom flings the grey bag to the ground, opens it, and starts handing me clothes to make room for books.  I simultaneously do the same with the red bag and start handing her books (before you even ask, NO, we did not have all books in the red bag and all clothes in the grey bag!).  We were like a well-oiled machine.  Well, a talkative one.

Mom: Why are you handing me paperbacks?  Don't you have any hardbacks?
Me: Here's one!
Mom: ONE?
Me: Why are you handing me yarn???
Mom: I thought it was a shirt!
Me: Here are two more hardbacks!
Mom: We should be good.  Let's weigh this one now.

We got the grey one zipped back up and weighed it.  It came in just under 49 pounds.  So we figured the red one should be under 50 pounds now.  I threw it one the scale, and it was now regulation.

When we were done, we were cracking up.  The whole thing actually took less than the time it took for the guy next to me to get his flight changed (he was on the same flight with me to STL, but the 25-minute delay was going to cause him to miss his connecting flight, so he had to get a new flight).

I really felt like we were on some wacky game show where you had to balance the bags in less than 30 seconds or something!

Then we went to the gift shop where I bought a shirt for Ria, and Mom pretended like she didn't know either Ria or me. It's okay, Mom; we know you're just jealous that our shirts are so awesome.

1 comment:

  1. That's hilarious!!! I only live about 15 minutes from Detroit Metro airport. I might spend an hour there some day just watching!

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