At my home airport, I was in a rush to meet the CTO for dinner after flying half way across the world. I didn’t have time to grab my luggage, so I just left it. I was home, so even if it got lost, I didn’t care in that moment.
My luggage showed up at my door the next morning.
Since I was flying fairly regularly, I did the same thing again when I landed at home. Sure enough, my luggage showed up at the door the next day. I wasn’t charged anything. It was magic.
I did this for years (about 6 times), until one day I caught the guy dropping it off. He apparently worked in lost luggage and my house was right down the street from his house, so he just brought it over each time to be nice.
I felt like an ass, but also, I thought there was some magic going on. We had a good laugh about it, but I waited for my luggage after that.
That sounds like the beginning of a slice-of-life movie... Withinboredom and the luggage guy became great pals, travelled the world together, started a business, met their spouses... until something dramatic happened, the link was severed, and now Withinboredom longs for the times they spent together, underlining how fleeting existence is, how every day is precious, etc etc.
Reminiscent of the plot in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lunchbox. A meet-cute with the famous Bombay Dabba-Walas (lunchbox delivery service) accidentally messing up a delivery, and leading to a correspondence and later a meeting between an unhappy housewife and a lonely widower.
OK. That's the second time now. I feel like in the last 48 hours, "meet-cute" or "meetcute" has been introduced as a New Word and everyone got the memo but me.
It’s not new. It’s been a thing in writing about rom
coms since at least the early 90s, if not earlier.
Edit: Wikipedia cites a first usage in print of 1941, which implies it was already a common trope at the time: The earliest example given by the Oxford English Dictionary is from Anthony Boucher's mystery novel The Case of the Solid Key (1941), in which a character says "We met cute, as they say in story conferences."
Also, everyone should watch Roman Holiday because honestly they never needed to make another romcom after that and the meet cute is the sweetest you'll ever see.
But it was largely limited to professional storywriters, Hollywood / Broadway types. The internet spread their lingo much more widely, and terms like that have become more common and fashionable in recent years.
He really does do movies like that, doesn't he? Stuck in the airport in the terminal, stuck on a remote island in castaway, even chasing decaprio in catch me if you can...
Reminds me of the CollegeHumor skit video where a layabout husband excitedly shows his wife a magic box in the bedroom where he puts his dirty clothes and a day later they appear clean and folded in his drawer.
What door? How did they know your address? I don't enter my address when flying. Maybe my miles card has it, but that feels far removed from the baggage handler's computers.
My luggage showed up at my door the next morning.
Since I was flying fairly regularly, I did the same thing again when I landed at home. Sure enough, my luggage showed up at the door the next day. I wasn’t charged anything. It was magic.
I did this for years (about 6 times), until one day I caught the guy dropping it off. He apparently worked in lost luggage and my house was right down the street from his house, so he just brought it over each time to be nice.
I felt like an ass, but also, I thought there was some magic going on. We had a good laugh about it, but I waited for my luggage after that.