After squinting my way through security and customs, and after breaking the record for the fastest consumption of a $9 Whopper at an airport Burger King in history, I reported to my departure gate, gave my ticket to the attendant, then began my long walk down always-shaky enclosed jetway towards the plane. Which, if you’ve been following along, is the moment when I realized that something didn’t quite feel right. And that something, of course, was that one of my bags–specifically my shoulder bag–was no longer on my person.

A greasy sweat broke out on my face and neck as I tried to politely shove my way back through the line of people who filled up, or rather clogged up, the jetway behind me. Once I reached the airport, I gave my ticket back to the attendant, then began to run at a pace that was far more than a jog but far less than a sprint. I was heading back towards the nondenominational food court/cafeteria thing that’s located near the U.S. departure gates. This is the place where I had consumed my Whopper. Though it is not the place where I purchased my Whopper. (Burger King is in an entirely different part of the airport.) I have a phobia about eating fast food in the place where I purchased it. The last thing anyone ever wants to see when they are eating a Whopper is someone else eating a Whopper. I always want to be as far away from the other Whopper-eaters as possible.

As I ran-jogged, I unpacked the lost bag in my mind. 3DS. Old-school DS with the Game Boy Advance slot. (Yes, I need both; stop questioning me.) PSP go (solely for PixelJunk Monsters, the best tower defense game ever made). iPad 2. iPhone 4G. The Winter 2012 Best of Vanity Fair Hollywood issue. Pair of noise-canceling Bose headphones. Mounds bar. (No Hustler.) Travel paperwork. It was what I like to call my “entertainment bag,” the knapsack that always gets the under-the-seat-in-front-of-me treatment because who knows which of these excellent entertainments might need to be called upon during the four hours of flight time to Chicago.

All of those items, as much as it would pain me and cost me big money to replace, could potentially be left behind. (In fact, if you want my Bose noise-canceling headphones, I will gladly send them to you. I regret the day that I ever laid eyes on the magazine ad showing a man wearing the Bose headphones and staring peacefully out the window of a 747.) But the prescription, post-surgery eye drops, which were also in my bag, and which needed to be administered practically four times an hour for the next six months of my life? They could most definitely not be left behind. In fact, as I closed in on the nondenominational food court, I realized that without my bag, specifically without those eye drops, I would not boarding any airplanes that day.

I wondered what my future held. I wondered if I’d spend the day sitting in an airport security office, filling out reports. I wondered if I’d wind up watching black and white security camera footage of my bag. “There,” the officer would say, pointing at the tiny monitor. “That’s the moment when the bag disappeared. See? It’s in this shot, but it’s not in this shot.”

During my Whopper consumption earlier, I remembered an extended family occupying a nearby table, or rather series of tables. They were obviously trying to find their way through a flight delay, because the table did not look like a table that people were simply eating at, but instead looked like a refugee encampment, with clothing and garbage strewn everywhere and kids slouching half asleep on chairs. As I’d hunched over at a nearby table and worked over that Whopper, the non-slouching members of the family played a card game together.

I spotted them in the distance. They were still there, to my great relief, but they were on the move, dismantling their encampment. The lot of them seemed to notice my loping form as I approached. They ceased dismantling their camp and observed me closely as I was reunited with my shoulder bag, which was still intact, which was still strung across the back of the chair exactly where I’d left it. I reclaimed the bag, putting my head through the strap.

The mother of the brood, a dark haired portly woman, saw me do this and said, “BOY, THAT ALMOST ENDED BADLY FOR YOU. HA, HA!”

Looking back on this moment, maybe the family had noticed the bag before I’d returned. Maybe they had tried, as a family, to decide what to do with it, and simply decided to wait and see if anyone came back for it. Maybe the mother’s intentions were good when she said this. They probably were. Maybe she didn’t actually say the words, “HA, HA!”

But in that moment, with sweat pouring down my sideburns, and with my gate still on the far side of the airport and my flight about to leave, I had use all of my powers–and I mean all of them, folks–to not utter a series of words that the entire family would not have been able to un-hear–I guarantee it–for the duration of their holidays.

I gave them all a jaw-clenched smile–the kind of smile that I specialize in–then began my jog-lope back in the other direction.

And lo, it’s time for level 1-7. Ingredients: Door on the top left. Key on the lower right. Two we’re-dressed-to-look-like-enemies enemies. Umbrella, ring, sombrero: all present and accounted for. One portable ladder. One portable bridge. One upward-moving elevator on the righthand side of the screen.

Let’s begin.

At the start of the level is one of those clothesline/trapeze structure. I jump up to it, get Mario spinning–pro tip: hold up on the directional pad–then send him flying through the air with the greatest of ease to collect the sombrero. The trapeze-flying moment is easily the most kinetic moment in the game so far. And though these moments never quite seem to fit in organically with the rest of the levels they appear in–they’re always isolated moments–if I see a clothesline-trapeze, I am going to use it.

On the middle tier of the girder system, I deploy a portable ladder to reach the bonus-points ring, then deploy it a second time to reach the top tier. Once up there, I leap over the patrolling enemy, then board the rising elevator on the righthand side of the screen. Problem is, I need to be going down, not up. After a few moment of fruitless experimentation, of trying to figure out if there was a way for Mario to “fall” through the rising elevator platforms to reach the key below, I abandon this strategy.

I realize–after a few seconds of observation–that what I need to do is deploy the portable ladder one more time at the middle tier I’d recently passed through, using it to climb down through the girder to the key below. Some girders–the ones with X’s through them–can be climbed through. The solid girders can’t be climbed through.

You can climb through this: XXXXXXXX.

But you can’t climb through this: IIIIIIIIIIIII.

So I deploy the ladder, descend into the area where the key stands, ride the incredibly small moving platform over to the key. Located in the same area near the key is a portable bridge power-up. I deploy it, then position it at the very top of the level, creating a new pathway for Mario to travel across once he reaches the top of the elevator.

Elevator power-up: deployed. Key: grabbed. Elevator: boarded. Elevator: exited. Enemy who looks like he’s dressed as an enemy: jumped over. Door: reached.

Now that I think about it, something far more exciting happens during the colon between “door” and “reached” in the last sentence. With the portable bridge’s theme song winding down, indicating that the bridge I was currently hurrying across with the key above my head was about to vanish, I leap at the last possible second, like Jason Statham leaps away from fireballs in movies. The bridge vanishes, but I’m already airborne. And once I land, two boots back on the ground again, level 1-7 is history.