The Curse of the Suit

Nathan and Luke both made it safely back to college on Sunday.  Luke flew back on a direct flight, so we thought there would be no problems.  When we took Luke down to college back in August, he decided to leave his suit here and just take down a pair of dress pants, white shirt, and tie.  Since being there, he decided there were some occasions where it would be nice to have a suit, so on the way back, he checked a (plain gray) suitcase to bring the suit and some other stuff back down with him. 

But unfortunately, the suit did not make it onto the plane with him.  Never to fear, though--it would arrive Monday, and they would bring it out to him! On Monday, a suitcase was indeed delivered to his dorm:

 So, clearly not a plain, gray suitcase.  Instead it belonged to some guy from Sweden.  At this point, the story began to feel like de ja vu . . .

 Last January, Nathan and Luke went to a big homeschool dance.  This picture was taken right as they were leaving.  At the dance, they all had their jackets off, draped on the back of chairs, and someone walked off with Luke's.  So they waited until the very end, and Luke took home the extra suit coat, which was pin striped, so clearly not his.  After numerous emails to the evite recipients and several moms homeschool loops, someone finally came forward who had a pinstriped suit but took home a black jacket that night. 

So we made the switch--and while this new suit coat was black, it wasn't the right brand name to go with his pants, and it also wasn't the right size.  So again, not the right coat.  After more fruitless emails, it seems there is still some clueless young man out there with a suit coat that doesn't match his pants.  In fact, it is probably laying in a crumpled heap on the bottom of his closet floor because clearly he never checked it, like all my emails implored everyone to do!  I threatened to pin a huge pink boutonniere on his jacket the next time he went to any sort of dance!

But we actually had a pressing need for a matching suit.  Luke was competing in the state mock trial tournament in March, so we finally bit the bullet and bought a lovely new charcoal suit.  It served him well for both the state tournament, as well as nationals.

It looked fine and distinguished . . . and it was the suit that didn't make the plane, and didn't get delivered on Monday afternoon.  Ack!  I was seriously wondering what kind of crazy bad luck made people careless about making sure we got the right suits. 

But hallelujah, this story has a happy ending!  The airline employees were able to figure out where they went wrong, and Monday night, Luke's actual boring gray suitcase was returned to him, with his charcoal gray suit inside, looking rumpled and definitely not like we had it dry-cleaned before we left.  But hey, we aren't having to go suit shopping again, so that is a huge win in my book!

And now Luke has 2 interesting airline stories to tell, the first being our emergency landing when we went down for a college visit!