2nd Honeymoon -- One last adventure on the way home

Friday morning we got up in time to pack up our room, have a nice cup of tea (me anyway... U. hates the smell of tea) at the hotel, and then be on our way.

It all went smoothly... arrived at the airport in plenty of time, uneventful flight back to Dallas, picked up on time etc.

Delighted to be back with ND and intrigued to see just a little bit of anxiety from her when I left the room to do some laundry, but otherwise a fairly seamless return. A perfectly predictable balance of her being impatient with me but very snuggly and eager to sit on my lap.

However, there was still one more thing to happen before our final return home.

On Sunday, in anticipation of the long flight back to Newark, U. downloaded several episodes of Caillou on his laptop. About an hour into the flight he pulled it out to set it up and immediately arose our first moment of tension throughout the entire trip.

"My computer's off. Why is it off?"

"I didn't turn it off."

"I didn't say you did."

And subsequently a few more not-so-pleasant exchanges, not our usual MO I'm glad to say. In any case, he went to turn it on to determine just what had gone wrong. It started up and he said,

"Oh now this is interesting..."

"What?" I leaned over trying to see.

"This isn't my computer."

We froze and stared at each other until ND picked up that something was wrong.

"What? What?"

"Hang on, N. We need to figure this out."

We called a flight attendant over. She said we would just have to call the airport when we landed and see if they could find ours. Immediately I started trying to calculate and determine from U. just what information we'd actually lost.

Then I thought that probably whoever had our computer wanted theirs back just as much as we wanted ours.

But where could it be? What if it was on its way to London? To China? How could it be determined? The switch must have happened in security, so it had to be someone with flights from the same area of the airport, but we'd come so early in the day. What if their flight was much earlier?

Another crew member approached, whether flight attendant or pilot I don't know. We re-explained the situation.

"Surely this can't be the first time this has happened," I said.

"Actually, it is."

He took the computer to see if he could locate some ID. About 20 minutes later we heard over the loudspeaker, "Is there a Mr. or Mrs. ________ on board."

"He figured out who it belongs to."

A moment later we saw one of the caller light buttons go off in business class. We couldn't see the face of the woman who pushed the button, but both the flight attendant and this 2nd crew member approached, spoke to her a moment, then showed her the laptop we'd handed over.

"It's here! It's here!"

They took down her bag and handed it to her. As she opened it the flight attendant made eye contact with us back in row 23 and gave a thumbs up.

We cheered as quietly and respectfully as etiquette requires on an airplane.