While we wait in the airports, aching and upset, the great loud speaker booms over everyone sternly stating that unattended baggage will be "confiscated and destroyed"! Ya, understandable, but I'm not gonna schlep both my huge back packs into the bathroom, setting them in a pool of someone else's piss just so I can relieve myself for 2 minutes, I'm sorry but I'm gonna leave them unattended and pray to god nobody slips a huge pipe bomb into my Peruvian satchel while I'm out and about. Anyway, this isn't the point, that's not what really puts me out. What really twists my panties in a bundle is the sadistic curious thought of where and how these unattended bags are being destroyed? How do they go about getting rid of them? Do they line up a bunch of suspicious Samsonites along a brink wall and mow them down with a machine gun like some terrible firing squad? Are the dangerous duffle bags dunked in acid and disintegrated? Just heaps of purses thrown over the Mexican boarder? Containers crammed with suitcases sunken to the bottom of the sea? Conspicuous carry-ons captured and held in cold cells, probed and flogged, questioned under dim overhanging lights, tortured and taunted with the sharp end of a hot cattle prod? Seriously though?! Where are these backpack graveyards, these butcher shops for briefcases; where are the ashes of deserted handbags? Is anyone looking into this? Are they euthanized ethically? And who is in charge of such a gruesome task; the hit men of fearsome fanny packs? My mind goes wildly off on this unnecessary tangent as I lean my greasy face against the glass watching the planes come and go as my bags lay next to me unattended for hours.
