This doesn't look familiar

My friend emailed from Canada this afternoon. He's there for work. His suitcase on the otherhand jumped ship, er, plane, and took vacation. While the airline has promised to return the deviant suitcase on Thursday, that's going to be too late as he returns home that day. He went shopping, and he wasn't exactly thrilled. I'd do the same, but I think my lack of excitement would be due to it still being cold in Canada and they are no doubt NOT featuring spring sales with brightly colored sandals and capris pants, so I'd have to buy dark colored wintry things to wear one time and then wait another 7 or 8 months to wear again. Nonetheless, that's all conjecture on my part.

His story reminded me of a different story and I got a kick out of returning to the memory. When I was 5 or 6, the family traveled to Wisconsin to visit my Aunt Nancy. My sister brought her horned toad along with her in a shoe box and that has nothing to do with anything except that I remember it and I remember he did not make the return trip, as he escaped in Wisconsin. But there was concern on my part that he wouldn't live through the flight at all, so upon landing, all was well and good in my mind. That is, until we got to Aunt Nancy's ranch and Mom popped open my suitcase to find a grown man's toiletries and business clothes, and apparently a very tall man. I can recall mom holding a pair of this strange man's pants up in the air and saying, "Oh my, he's very tall" (as if his height was the clincher that there was NO WAY that she could dress me in his pants?). Anyway, the poor guy got to his hotel room and no doubt opened the suitcase and thought, "Oh my, she's very small." Mom called the number on his identification tag and I believe his wife gave us his hotel information. Dad contacted the hotel and the two met the following day to exchange the suitcases. I remember Mom saying that he must be very relieved since he was on a "business trip."

And so business trip man and vacationing little girl returned to their respective worlds in proper attire. I question how relieved he was though, and actually think he might have been a bit disappointed. Because let me tell you, there is no way you could have seen my hand-tooled red leather cowboy boots and not coveted them for yourself. No way.