When I awoke from a two-hour nap in New York’s LaGuardia Airport, I reached for my backpack, which hangs from a hook on the back of my wheelchair. It wasn’t there.
The feeling that arises from the fear of a lost item is distressing. My muscles tensed as my panic swelled. I turned to look behind my chair, my mind racing with the dreaded thought that I had been robbed when I saw it — my backpack, hanging not from the left hook where I normally place it, but from the right hook that is more difficult for me to reach.
That’s strange, I thought. Odd indeed for me to have struggled to put the backpack on that hook. Perhaps I had moved it there during my earlier trip to the bathroom, where I had gone before finding a place to nap on the floor of the LaGuardia terminal building? My backpack was there, with my laptop still inside, so all was good — right?
Despite my most valuable possessions being intact, I could not shake the idea that something was amiss. As I turned, I noticed something on the floor about ten feet away that was either a coincidence or evidence that my luggage had been tampered with, that my trust had been violated in my sleep.
