So the wife unit, +Margie Kleerup, flew off to California on Tuesday morning. Southwest flight, boarded separate from a friend, and then all sorts of seat shifting around with a third person in the row, and (presumably) chit-chat during the flight with her friend.
Got to Oakland, and couldn't find her Kindle. Searched high. Searched low. Searched all the seat pockets. Searched the floor. Searched the luggage rack. Flight attendants came by to help search. No sign of it.
Thinking back, she remembered putting it down at the TSA check point back in Denver. So she IMed me and asked me to check. Which ended up, after a call to Lost & Found (don't bother within 24 hours of losing something) going to the website DIA has for registering a lost item. (Though that only applies for public area items; areas around the gates may have stuff picked up by the airlines, and if you leave something in a restaurant, they are probably holding onto it.)
Anyway, I had just registered and … the phone rang. It was a guy named Eric who had Margie's Kindle, and had found her name in the registration screen on the Kindle, and, following her rather unique name to a phone number in the Denver area, wanted to call to arrange getting it back to us.
Wow.
Well, it took a few days of coordination, but it turned out he was visiting the Ikea down in our neck of the woods, so I met him there. And, aside from the labyrinthine nature of getting into and then being unable to get out of an Ikea, it was that simple. He handed it off, I thanked him profusely, we shook hands, and headed our separate ways.
And now the Kindle is here, waiting for her return.
So, thanks, Eric. Folk like you help maintain my faith in humanity, in a world that seems to do its darnedest to get eliminate it.
(That's The Parable of the Good Samaritan by Jan Wijnants (1670) below. No, nothing life threatening about losing a Kindle, but a kindness is a kindness. Who is my neighbor? It's the person who does a kindness, or needs one.)
"aside from the labyrinthine nature of getting into and then being unable to get out of an Ikea"
You mean you left without furniture?
+Patrick Bick It was hellishly difficult (and it's more the tchotchkes that I get suckered into at Ikea) — but I had a Father/Daughter Movie Night to get back to. 🙂
I swear, though — I discovered there was (from my starting point, one escalator bank too far) no way to get back to the front of the store. It was … a bit creepy.
Technology is truly our friend.
I left a really nice umbrella on the bus a few months ago. No amount of technology can conquer a Seattllite who finds a really nice umbrella.
::sighs::
Ikea's are like Disneyland rides. You get in at one point and you go through the whole damned thing before you're allowed to get out again.
"This is a dark ride"… ;^>
+Paula Moore No, actually, exceedingly well lit.
I actually enjoy visiting Ikea. It's like Moria, interesting to visit, but a bad place to try and just travel through.