Jiggedy Jig

Greetings from beautiful Mt. Vernon Illinois. We had a bit of excitement on the way back. I flew from Seoul to Chicago O'Hare and then had a connecting flight from O'Hare to St. Louis. (Until recently, Chicago was the final destination. My folks moved down here to Mt. Vernon a while back and now the nearest major airport is St. Louis.) As I was unloading my stuff on the connecting flight my laptop was not in my guitar case. My blood went cold. Meanwhile the stewardess is hassling me about having the guitar stowed just so. How could it not be there? "Try tilting it a little and see if the bin closes." Where could I have left it? "Well unless you can get someone to agree to put it under the seat" Should I get off the plane and go look for it? "Sir, we need that strapped into a seat." Should I go on to St. Louis and then make phone calls? "Sir it needs to be on the seat like this and strapped in." Was it hopeless anyway?
At first my assessment was that it had probably been left on the plane which I'd taken from Seoul to Chicago. So I'm trying to think but basically feeling like probably there's no point in getting off since the people I'll need to talk to will be Korean air. Then it comes to me that I distinctly remember taking the laptop out of the guitar case and putting it into a seperate plastic tray-thingy to go through the security checkpoint in O'Hare. (One has to clear security again during the transfer process.) At that point it all shifts. If the laptop was left at a security checkpoint in O'Hare, then going on to St. Louis and trying to handle it by phone is a terrible idea. I need to get off this plane. I call out to the stewardess to hang on a second I want off and start grabbing my stuff. I look up to see she's closing the door.

So, the next 10 minutes must have been very annoying for everybody else on that flight. But they did let me off. I did get my laptop back at the security checkpoint (where a bored looking guard thanked me for saving him the paperwork) I got on the next flight to St. Louis, my mom got some Xmas shopping done in the extra three hours, and United didn't even charge me for the new ticket.

(The free ticket may have had something to do with the bit of dialogue:
Stewardess: If you get off you can't get back on.
Me: I understand that. I'll just have to buy a ticket for the next flight.
(Pause. Then, thinking out loud.) Or maybe I can just head to my grandma's instead of my folk's place.
Stewardess: Sir, do you have any checked bags. Do we need to take them off the plane?
(Surely that would have meant at least another half an hour of sitting there for the other passengers.)
Me: Oh god no. No no. They can go on to St. Louis and I'll take the next flight and pick them up.)