Don’t Forget to Pack Your Dwarf

Apparently, TSA may not be to blame for my jewelry loss. Dwarves in Sweden are the newest form of luggage thievery and traveling absurdity. Once again, to all my readers: please do not store valuables in your luggage! Wear them or stuff them down your pants.

Highway Robbery: Gangs Smuggle Dwarves Onto Buses

(January 25, 2008)—Bus companies in Sweden are advising travelers not to leave valuables in their bags.

Gangs of criminals are hiding dwarves in sports bags and smuggling them onto buses to steal luggage.

Once secured in the luggage hold under the bus the small stowaways are free to rummage through personal belongings.

Swebus, which operates services across the Sweden, has been hit by this scam several times.

Swedish officials have received similar reports from other parts of the country; as well as dwarves, children have also been used in the scam.

Where’s My Seat?: A Flyer’s Perpetual Mystery

By Tyler John Hudson

I always face a dilemma when I fly - to get on the plane first and sit in the back, or get on later and sit up front, allowing for a speedier exit upon arrival. More often than not, this dilemma is not one I create, and certainly not one I solve, as my seat assignment as generally the product of some Rube Goldberg-esque formula the airlines have created to maximize customer frustration.

The times that I do get on the plane early, I play a mental game called ‘where’s my seat?’ This involves me sitting in my seat on the plane (great people watching) and watching the other passengers find their seat. It is this process of the flying experience that gives me the most enjoyment (when I’m seated) or the second-most frustration (when I’m not). The first-most frustrating experience is the bowel-clenching turbulence that results from the pilots not paying attention to the “air road” and spending too much time on their Teen People crossword (I don’t know if this is actually what happens but it’s how I imagine it).

Back to ‘Where’s My Seat?.’ So unless you’re flying Southwest airlines, you have a single or double digit number on your ticket that corresponds to the consecutively numbered rows, in ascending order, that comprise the seating area of the airplane. Further, if you possess basic depth-perception abilities, and a familiarity with the Arabic numeral system (at least to the number 40), then you should be able to estimate, roughly, how far down the aisle you must go to reach your row. Are you still with me?

Here’s the game: looking at a person and guessing how many rows they will look at before they finally waddle down the aisle to reach their seat. That’s not a fat joke, I think everyone looks like a waddling duck when they walk down an airplane aisle. Anyway, I score the most points (the scoring system is complex, a derivative of an 18th century cricket scoring method used in rural Ceylon, now Madagascar) when a person starts looking at the row numbers immediately upon entering the plane, and then end up taking their seat in the back.

If you are flying on a typical Boeing 737-300 or Airbus A320, seat 20A is not anywhere near the front of the airplane. After looking at Rows 1, 3, 5, and 9, Row 20 is not going to follow Row 13.

Thus spake the left-handed ginger.