bye bye bag

Approximately one week has passed since I realized my green backpack is nowhere to be seen. This is a real cause for alarm as my green backpack is, well, really freakin' important to me, as you can probably guess. I bought it in 1997 to carry around my new laptop (no fancy schmancy leather cases for me, no sir!) and the bag has since accompanied me all across the country, carrying clothes and whatnot I couldn't fit into my grey duffle bag, notebooks, spare change, illict substances (how'd those get in there?!) and various and sundry goods.

And now I couldn't find it. Of course, knowing the state of my room, you might guess it's been swallered up by the debris and clothes that lurk inside. But no. I tore apart the room in a mad effort to find the bag. (How can you tell I tore the room apart? Ha, ha. Go away.)

I checked the car. I checked the trunk. I checked around the house. The cats hadn't seen it. I called Jendave. It wasn't at her place. I even asked Mom. No go. The last time I remember toting the damn thing around was when I was in Cambridge for the television show meeting.

Oh, crap. I must've left it on the T. Do I remember carrying it up the Alewife escalator? Well, honestly, my short-term memory prevents me from clearly taking mental stock of what I had and had not in my possession as I returned to my car. So there. It's probably on the T.

Did you know each line of the T has its own lost-and-found office and phone number? The different branches of the Green Line are also separated this way. The nice lady I talked to for the Red Line lost-and-found invited me to go to the office at JFK Station and pick up my bag. "We got a million of them there, " she says with a laugh. She also notes the office is open 24 hours a day, "but most folks won't let you in after 10 PM or so." I make a note to visit before, say, 6:30 PM.

Come Tuesday I'm riding the Red Line all the way from Alewife to JFK. I snicker as the Talkie T says "Entering - Andrew" and then step off on the split JFK platform, confused. I'm already lost; I need to be found. The woman at the ticket booth points in the vague direction of another platform and says "Go down all the way to the end." She lets me back in for free (I had to exit in order to even talk to a T employee.)

Naturally, I go to the wrong end of the platform and walk veeeeeeeery quickly over to the other side. It's cold out here, dammit. Up a flight of stairs is a strange office, hanging over the train tracks. It is inside here that the Lost-And-Found Guy lives with his security guard buddies. They are not surprised to see a total stranger enter their turf, so I feel slightly relieved. Although I've a legitimate reason for being here, I always hate having to explain myself.

"I'm looking for a green backpack, " I say. "It's got "QUEST" written on it and a compass." I almost say compass rose, but realize Lost-And-Found Guy probably wouldn't understand. He understands fully that I came at the worst possible time, though.

"You shoulda been here a few days ago. We just had to throw a lotta stuff out, cause some backpacks had food in 'em, and they were attracting flies all over the closet. It was pretty unbearable."

Lost-And-Found Guy opens the small closet that contains every lost item honestly recovered on the Red Line. For a broom closet, it contains no brooms. But it does have a doll, an old camera with telescoping lens, some stuff in a plastic black trash bag, and only one or two backpacks. None of them are mine.

"I don't remember seein a green backpack like yours come in, though, " LAFG says as I lift up a leather satchel in vain, maybe trying to find an interdimensional wormhole underneath where my bag could've landed. "But, as I said, we hadda clean a lot of 'em out cause of the food." I assure LAFG that I had no food in my backpack, but I did have some stuff I really needed. Like notebooks.

"Uh oh, schoolwork?" Well, not really. I'm not in school, but yeah, it's that important. My real problem right now is that I can't even remember everything I had in that backpack when I lost it. That's what's going to suck the most; I'll be noticing "lost" items months from now, I bet. Hey, where'd that book of mine go? ...

Lost-And-Found Guy clucks his tongue in sympathy, and we both stare around the closet in an awkward, futile manner. Having run out of things to say, he reaches over and picks up an backpack. It's green, like mine, but not too green. It has more pockets than mine. There's nothing inside.

"We've had this one for a coupla months, " he says. "No ID, and fulla food. We cleaned it out the best we could. If you want it, it's yours. I'd wash it out again, though, before I used it."

I hesitate. This is someone's backpack we're talking about here. This person probably went through the same thing I'm going through now. My life, my being, my personal effects, lost on some random train platform and now the empty shell going to another. On the other hand, my being didn't involve rotten food and two months of incubation. Besides, as Lost-And-Found Guy points out, "These things go for $40/$50 these days. And we're only gonna throw it out."

I take the backpack.

God's opening windows and closing doors left and right here.

I sit on the platform nervously. What happens if someone rushes up and goes "Hey, that's my bag!!" and starts a fight? I now live in mortal fear that such recognition will take place. I clutch the bag nervously and fidget with the blue-and-white tassels on the zippers.

This feeling passes somewhere around Central Square. Kinda anti-climactic, isn't it?

Well, the Celtics played their last game on their 53-year-old parquet floor tonight; it's being replaced just in time for their first home game in 2000. As you'll remember, the parquet floor was so warped and bowed in places it was about as weird as Fenway Park's outfield walls, and just another example of the wonderful idiosyncracy of Boston sports. I know I'm gonna miss it. The new floor will be a "replica" of the old one, at least, but I bet it'll be able to take a level reading and pass. Oh well. Look for pieces of the old floor to show up on eBay any day now.

Take care, and don't eat anything you shouldn't.