Personal Item

It's the underwear or the toothbrush, ma'am.

I’m on the eve of a trip to see my sister. It involves a plane, a destination, preparations. I’ll be away a week. I read the notification from the “ultra-affordable airline” I’ve selected; the email arrives 72 hours ahead of departure. It tries to jolly me out of any expectations I might have surrounding service and there being any. There isn’t. “Be honest,” it reads “were you really looking forward to the food on the airplane?” As it turns out there is, however, a “water service” that they tout using precisely that term. They’ve effectively disabused me of the notion of food but heart and mind are now aflutter at the prospect of the water service. 

Luggage. I read this part carefully. “You can bring a personal item free of charge.” “Personal item.” I  narrow my eyes, repeat the words out loud, draw out the syllables, massage them, try to make them bigger than they seem to be, try to make them sound like “carry-on.” Carry-on I know. Carry-on I understand. Carry-on I can visualize. What’s this “personal item” stuff? I see myself getting on the plane with a pair of underwear in one hand and a toothbrush in the other and having a Sophie’s Choice moment when the flight attendant says, I’m sorry ma’am, It’s the toothbrush or the underwear, Which will it be?

An unpleasant thought attempts to form in my mind. I ignore it. It persists. They probably told  me this when I bought the ticket, I finally admit to myself. The truth is that my fare will get me on the plane but not my stuff. Try though I might to convince myself that “personal item” is a new term for carry-on, it’s not. “Personal item” is, as the description says, “about the size of a purse or small laptop bag.” In other words, I can have both my toothbrush and my underwear but nothing else. I visualize my week’s worth of clothing: minimal but still too much. “Carry-on,” the already poor cousin to “checked baggage,” will cost an additional $180 return, as much as I paid for me to fly. Ridiculous. I need to figure out how to pack a week’s worth of clothing in a small laptop bag. Good thing it’s summer.

When I click around in my booking I find a section on “Services.” I read that “Each passenger is allowed to store 1 personal item (purse, briefcase or small backpack) under the seat in front of you.” Well that’s different. That’s my kind of wiggle room. “Small backpack.” I can work with that. That could mean anything. “Small backpack” is tons bigger than “small laptop bag.” And that space under the seat in front of me? Give me a minute and I’ll make it a home for a family of five. Is that an inch? Funny. I could’ve sworn it was a mile.  

But still, how to pull this off? How to get a week’s worth of clothing in a “small backpack.” The last time I made this trip I did it clothesless, positive I could buy all I needed second-hand at my destination. I could not have been more wrong. I spent some part of every day trying to clothe myself from dismal second-hand pickings. Never again. This time I’d arrive ready to dress myself. 

I break it down. “Small.” “Backpack.” You could drive a truck through there. “Small” is a matter of opinion. I decide I simply need a bag I can defend at the departure gate. I thought ‘small’ meant no rucksacks, I’ll say, No sixty-litre backpacks, Not this tiny thing, Surely it’s okay. Aside from the small bag I need to dress heavy. I need to be the bag, wear what I can’t pack. 

Last month I was at the check-in counter with my son and his wife when they were told their two overweight, checked bags would cost them an additional $486 to fly. They knew they were pushing it but $486? An extra carry-on bag, however, would cost only $75. Pro tip. They had an empty duffle bag with them. My son rolled the luggage to an adjacent scale, threw the bags down, unzipped their lids, and proceeded to grab and weigh out handfuls of contents like it was ground beef and he was a butcher, redistributing the weight between the bags. Impressive. But I don’t have that latitude.

But were my worries or attempts at vacuum-packing even necessary? When I got to the airport I realized that because I’d checked-in online there’d be no airline personnel to see my bag and tell me it was too big, I’d proceed straight to security and the gate. At the gate there were only one-and-a-half airline staff checking ID and passes during boarding, the fraction of a person appearing to split his time between ground crew and gate duties, a pair of noise-canceling headphones around his neck. It was all the one full person could do to get us on the plane before the next one arrived. She didn’t so much as glance at bags. I could’ve had my son’s luggage with me. And even if she did check, like the staff at the gate on my return, there’d still be no way of knowing whether I’d paid or not, there being no indication on the boarding pass. And, of course, I hadn’t paid anything extra but I’d stuck to my “small backpack” and it mostly worked although by the end of the trip I was sick to death of everything in it. But it flew for free and that was the main thing. Had I known the airline worked on the honour system, however, I might have packed differently. And may.