Fifteen floors over the city, this stuff comes flaming and bashing and shattering down on everyone's car.

Me, while I'm heading west, asleep at Mach 0.83 or 455 miles an hour, true airspeed, the FBI is bomb-squading my suitcase on a vacated runway back at Dulles. Nine times out of ten, the security task force guy says, the vibration is an electric razor. This was my cordless electric razor. The other time, it's a vibrating dildo.

The security task force guy told me this. This was at my destination, without my suitcase, where I was about to cab it home and find my flannel sheets shredded on the ground.

Imagine, the task force guy says, telling a passenger on arrival that a dildo kept her baggage on the East Coast. Sometimes it's even a man. It's airline policy not to imply ownership in the event of a dildo. Use the indefinite article.

A dildo.

Never your dildo.

Never, ever say the dildo accidentally turned itself on.

A dildo activated itself and created an emergency situation that required evacuating your baggage.

Rain was falling when I woke up for my connection in Stapleton.

Rain was falling when I woke up on our final approach to home.

An announcement told us to please take this opportunity to check around our seats for any personal belongings we might have left behind. Then the announcement said my name. Would I please meet with an airline representative waiting at the gate.

I set my watch back three hours, and it was still after midnight.

There was the airline representative at the gate, and there was the security task force guy to say, ha, your electric razor kept your checked baggage at Dulles.