We had forgotten the sunscreen.

Or, maybe we hadn’t.

Most likely, it was intentionally left behind because the 8-ounce bottle would’ve just been confiscated at the airport, anyway, and I also wasn’t about to pay thirty-something dollars for checked luggage just for a bottle of sunscreen.

Instead, I had a brilliant idea—why don’t we just buy sunscreen when we arrived? So, that’s what we did.

Who would’ve thought a bottle of sunscreen in the Bahamas would cost $15? Well, it did, and to keep my grumbling to a minimum, I reminded myself I still saved the money from flying it all the across the country.

We had a great several days in Nassau, religiously using the sunscreen we bought. After all, we knew that it wasn’t going to go home with us, as we weren’t going to pay $30 for a $15 sunscreen. We lathered up like we had to squeeze every ounce of money out of that bottle.

We had planned to switch islands halfway through the trip, so we arrived at the Nassau airport, ready to check in for our flight to Freeport, a short hop to the north. The airport wasn’t too busy, and we walked up to the counter, got our tickets, and headed for security. As we actually had free checked luggage this time, we got to rid ourselves of an overhead bag and walk a little bit lighter through the airport.

It was only when my bag was pulled to the side that I suddenly remembered it: that bottle of sunscreen. Since my carry-on bag had also been my beach bag, I still had the sunscreen in my bag, and that 8-ounce bottle also wasn’t gonna fly here, either. The security agent told me I had two options: chuck it or check it.

I was not about to chuck a $15 bottle and have to buy a whole new one; I was quite familiar with the multiplication fact that 15 times two equaled $30, the whole point of what I was trying to avoid paying in the first place.

So, check it, it is. Since the airport was so empty, I ran back to the counter. It had been barely a minute since we left the counter, so I hoped my luggage was still there.

Unfortunately, it was not. I would not be able to add the sunscreen to my luggage.

So that’s when I had the idea.

“Can I…. just check in this sunscreen?” I asked the agent at the counter.

“Well,” she said, considering it. “I don’t think it will fly too well like that. Maybe you can buy a bag for it at one of the shops here.” She gestured behind me, and there was one of those shops that sells luggage for desperate travelers.

Am I really going to buy a bag just for my sunscreen? I was back to the same ol’ dilemma as before: how much am I willing to spend to pack a bottle of sunscreen? At home, my price was $0. Here, I was determined to keep it also at $0.

Nevertheless, I wandered into the store, trying to think through some solutions.

“Can I help you find anything?” the bored woman behind the counter asked, barely looking up from her fingernails she was inspecting.

I thought I’d give it a try. “I’ve got to check in this sunscreen,” I said.

She eyed me, half amused by what I had just said, but also a bit perplexed about why it mattered to me that much.

“It’s just that I don’t really want to buy a whole suitcase just to check this,” I added.

“Right,” she laughed. Then she paused. “How about this?” She ducked down for a brief moment and popped back up with a cardboard box.

It was a little bit big for the sunscreen, but it was free.

“Works for me!” I said. Now we’re talking. I was still on track for not paying to ship sunscreen.

“Now, I don’t have any tape to tape that box shut,” she said.

Shoot. Maybe my plan was foiled after all—so close, yet so far. But I wasn’t going to give up yet. I had one more stop to make: the check in counter, again.

I showed up with my sunscreen in a box. “Do you have tape for this?” I asked. The agent laughed, but she also produced a role of tape. We got that box all taped shut.

“Oh, wait a minute,” she said. Now what? “You’ve already checked in a bag. We’ll have to charge you for this one.”

You’ve got to be kidding me. In my eagerness to walk through a small airport with only a carry-on, I had denied myself a chance to keep that $15 sunscreen.

But, then I had another idea: Douglas hadn’t checked a bag. This box of sunscreen was about to become his.

“One moment,” I said to the agent, grabbing the box and racing off to security. Douglas was still waiting there for me, passed through on the other side, wondering what was taking so long.

With no working international phone, I flailed my arms until he finally understood that I was asking him to come back out of security.

“What on earth do you want?” he asked. “And what do you have in that box?”

“This is the sunscreen,” I told him. He was well aware of the sunscreen fiasco from the day we packed our luggage back in Seattle. “And now it is your checked luggage.”

He rolled his eyes at me, but I knew he didn’t mean it—if either one of us is about saving money, he outpaces me by a long shot. As much as he felt he got to mock me for my sunscreen checked in a cardboard box, I know he was happy we weren’t paying for more sunscreen—or for more checked luggage.

He checked in his box and we went through security—again. The security guards, from their vantage point, had been able to see the whole scene, from me running around with a box to waving Douglas down to join me back on the public side. They laughed as we approached them, box-free and sunscreen-free.

When we landed in Freeport, we were looking for two things on that baggage claim: our checked-in luggage, and a ragged cardboard box. It wasn’t too hard to find.

We finished out our trip in Freeport (including a near-death drowning incident) before flying back to Nassau to catch our return trip home. I can’t remember if I even bothered to pack the sunscreen to Nassau.

I guess we’d forgotten the sunscreen in Freeport.

Or, maybe we hadn’t.