Man in a wheelchair was told he wasn’t attending to his luggage and almost lost it

Thursday’s entry of the blog “Chewing the Fat” starts with– “Suddenly, I lost existence.”

What follows is a tale of what happened to David Hingsburger, the writer of the missive at the airport. It could be right out of an Alice in Wonderland type story.

In the post, Hingsburger recounts his recent experience of sitting in his wheelchair next to his luggage and enjoying the nuances of the airport when a security guard began loading the suitcases onto a cart to whisk them away. Hingsburger protested the action, insisting that the luggage belonged to him. Taking the luggage was stealing it.

The security guard said that the luggage must be attended to. What followed is lunacy. No matter how much Hingsburger insisted that he was attending to his luggage, the security guard insisted that he wasn’t. In the security guard’s mind, a person in a wheelchair couldn’t possibly attend to luggage.

Finally, a pilot noticed the brouhaha and intervened. Taking the security guard aside, the pilot talked some sense into him. Hingsburger was allowed to keep his luggage, and was left wondering what would have happened if the pilot hadn’t shown up to intervene.

I’m sure Hingsburger would have gotten his luggage back, but what a fiasco that would have been. From reading Hingburger’s profile, it sounds like this may have been the airport in Toronto where Hingsberger lives.