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| I see a crack in the windshield ! |
I was sitting in the Coach section of the plane on a fairly short (2.5 hour) flight from my home base to the western U.S. As usual the flight was overbooked and every seat is taken. This was one of the smaller jets, with two seats, the aisle, and then two more seats. Since I am tall, I covet the emergency row seats because of the extra legroom. But this flight was full and there were no ER seats available.
So I got on the plane and found my chair. It happened to be directly behind the emergency row. The emergency row seats have extra space for a reason. If the plane has a problem you need to get the passengers off of the plane as quickly as possible. There are restrictions on who can sit in the ER seats. You cannot sit in the Emergency Exit row if you are too frail to open the ER door, handicapped, or under the age of 15. These restrictions are announced before every flight takes off. Everyone is aware of them.
Or so you’d think.
On this flight, the Emergency Seating row was full with two young women traveling with their children, who all appeared to be under the age of two. One mother had two toddlers she was trying to cope with. There was a third mom was sitting in the chair across the aisle from me, with her toddler in her lap. And a pregnant lady was sitting right next to her. What is the deal here? Was I on some kind of Mail Order Mommy Flight? If Michael Jackson was still alive, I would think this was a flight chartered by him.
But I degress….. So what happened to the no one under 15 in the ER row rule? The flight attendant was helping settle these children into those seats at the same time as that announcement was heard on the PA system. Whaaat?? Was the flight attendant deaf as well as ignorant of FAA rules about ER seats? I guess I could have protested and made them move, but it would have caused more delays and we were already late for take-off. If you miss your departure time, sometimes you sit on the tarmac for hours. No one wants that, so I kept my mouth shut.
The little kid ahead of me had some sort of toy that he kept dropping and it would roll underneath his seat and end up between my feet. I picked it up a couple of times and gave it back, but soon realized that this was a losing proposition. I feigned sleep the next time I heard it hit the ground, and there it stayed for the duration of the trip. But all this did was cause mommy to bring out an electronic game for the budding hoodlum to play with. He would occasionally shriek in reaction to something that the game did, which was a bit un-nerving. Any time you hear someone shriek, it sends a tiny signal to the brain (or in my case a signal to my tiny brain) that something is wrong. In this case what was wrong was flying with children! The volume on the game was way too loud but the Mom was oblivious to it. I am sure she was nearly deaf from the noise that a tiny child can produce. The flight attendant finally had to ask for the volume to be turned down. Thank god.
As the flight progressed, all the toddlers started wailing in unison and squirming around like giant maggots. And I will bet that the pregnant lady was looking at this cluster of toddler mayhem with a feeling of future dread. I know I would have been. Their cries from hunger and boredom became louder and more irritating. It was like being trapped in a cylinder shaped daycare center. I was getting crabby just listening to them be crabby.
Then, one of the spawn from hell started running up and down the aisle of the plane. And the predictable happened….I heard a big thump and then a blood curdling howl. The child just fell down and smacked her face on a plane component. Her scream had a louder DB than the jet engine produced. There is something particularly irritating about a child’s high pitched scream to a middle aged man’s eardrum. Hearing that sound makes me want to act like Van Gogh and rip my ears off.
The kid ahead of me was kicking and thumping some unseen object. The mother’s response was to yell at him, which added to the din. And there was something behind me kicking my seat. Was I completely surrounded by uncontrollable youths? Thank goodness the lady across the aisle hadn’t given birth yet. At least her kid was safely ensconced in a womb. Sort of like it being in the Cone of Silence from “Get Smart”.
There was a small Asian man in the seat next to me. He was strapped in and sitting straight up. Somehow he managed to sleep during the entire trip. And, as one can expect, he was drooling on himself. If he slimed me, I was ready to give him an elbow. His head would occasionally slump forward, and then whip around like he was on a carnival ride. This happened over and over. I was expecting his head to snap off of his pencil thin neck and roll down the aisle.
The flight attendant came back to check on the kids. She assured the moms that the pilot would make up the lost time so we wouldn’t be in the air any longer than necessary. She should have been re-assuring ME. I’d already been in the air longer than necessary. If it was later in the day, I would start drinking heavily. Why on earth did the good Lord put voices on tiny humans? Couldn’t that have been an option that grew in later, like body hair? And why don’t’ moms, who MUST know they are pissing off an entire planeload of passengers, figure out a way to gag these tiny noise making hellions?
There was an occasional lull in the commotion. But I was not fooled by the silence. Sorta like President Obama saying he wants to reduce spending. No one would fall for that either. The quiet was just a fake calm until something set them all off again. There was a child standing on the lap of its Mom and dancing, while pulling back on the seat in front of her. Then this little monster tried to climb up over the seat. Where was my stun gun when I needed it?
The squirming, the wiggling, and endless screech owl noises were starting to get to me. Is this the airlines’ way of getting customers like me to pay for Business Class seating? I refuse to be bullied in to spending triple for a seat in the quiet part of the plane when you don’t get to your destination any faster than do the Great Unwashed who travels in coach. Next time I will spend that triple amount in the bar before I board the plane. I am sure that sobriety is over rated when it comes to dealing with toddlers.
So I got on the plane and found my chair. It happened to be directly behind the emergency row. The emergency row seats have extra space for a reason. If the plane has a problem you need to get the passengers off of the plane as quickly as possible. There are restrictions on who can sit in the ER seats. You cannot sit in the Emergency Exit row if you are too frail to open the ER door, handicapped, or under the age of 15. These restrictions are announced before every flight takes off. Everyone is aware of them.
Or so you’d think.
On this flight, the Emergency Seating row was full with two young women traveling with their children, who all appeared to be under the age of two. One mother had two toddlers she was trying to cope with. There was a third mom was sitting in the chair across the aisle from me, with her toddler in her lap. And a pregnant lady was sitting right next to her. What is the deal here? Was I on some kind of Mail Order Mommy Flight? If Michael Jackson was still alive, I would think this was a flight chartered by him.
But I degress….. So what happened to the no one under 15 in the ER row rule? The flight attendant was helping settle these children into those seats at the same time as that announcement was heard on the PA system. Whaaat?? Was the flight attendant deaf as well as ignorant of FAA rules about ER seats? I guess I could have protested and made them move, but it would have caused more delays and we were already late for take-off. If you miss your departure time, sometimes you sit on the tarmac for hours. No one wants that, so I kept my mouth shut.
The little kid ahead of me had some sort of toy that he kept dropping and it would roll underneath his seat and end up between my feet. I picked it up a couple of times and gave it back, but soon realized that this was a losing proposition. I feigned sleep the next time I heard it hit the ground, and there it stayed for the duration of the trip. But all this did was cause mommy to bring out an electronic game for the budding hoodlum to play with. He would occasionally shriek in reaction to something that the game did, which was a bit un-nerving. Any time you hear someone shriek, it sends a tiny signal to the brain (or in my case a signal to my tiny brain) that something is wrong. In this case what was wrong was flying with children! The volume on the game was way too loud but the Mom was oblivious to it. I am sure she was nearly deaf from the noise that a tiny child can produce. The flight attendant finally had to ask for the volume to be turned down. Thank god.
As the flight progressed, all the toddlers started wailing in unison and squirming around like giant maggots. And I will bet that the pregnant lady was looking at this cluster of toddler mayhem with a feeling of future dread. I know I would have been. Their cries from hunger and boredom became louder and more irritating. It was like being trapped in a cylinder shaped daycare center. I was getting crabby just listening to them be crabby.
Then, one of the spawn from hell started running up and down the aisle of the plane. And the predictable happened….I heard a big thump and then a blood curdling howl. The child just fell down and smacked her face on a plane component. Her scream had a louder DB than the jet engine produced. There is something particularly irritating about a child’s high pitched scream to a middle aged man’s eardrum. Hearing that sound makes me want to act like Van Gogh and rip my ears off.
The kid ahead of me was kicking and thumping some unseen object. The mother’s response was to yell at him, which added to the din. And there was something behind me kicking my seat. Was I completely surrounded by uncontrollable youths? Thank goodness the lady across the aisle hadn’t given birth yet. At least her kid was safely ensconced in a womb. Sort of like it being in the Cone of Silence from “Get Smart”.
There was a small Asian man in the seat next to me. He was strapped in and sitting straight up. Somehow he managed to sleep during the entire trip. And, as one can expect, he was drooling on himself. If he slimed me, I was ready to give him an elbow. His head would occasionally slump forward, and then whip around like he was on a carnival ride. This happened over and over. I was expecting his head to snap off of his pencil thin neck and roll down the aisle.
The flight attendant came back to check on the kids. She assured the moms that the pilot would make up the lost time so we wouldn’t be in the air any longer than necessary. She should have been re-assuring ME. I’d already been in the air longer than necessary. If it was later in the day, I would start drinking heavily. Why on earth did the good Lord put voices on tiny humans? Couldn’t that have been an option that grew in later, like body hair? And why don’t’ moms, who MUST know they are pissing off an entire planeload of passengers, figure out a way to gag these tiny noise making hellions?
There was an occasional lull in the commotion. But I was not fooled by the silence. Sorta like President Obama saying he wants to reduce spending. No one would fall for that either. The quiet was just a fake calm until something set them all off again. There was a child standing on the lap of its Mom and dancing, while pulling back on the seat in front of her. Then this little monster tried to climb up over the seat. Where was my stun gun when I needed it?
The squirming, the wiggling, and endless screech owl noises were starting to get to me. Is this the airlines’ way of getting customers like me to pay for Business Class seating? I refuse to be bullied in to spending triple for a seat in the quiet part of the plane when you don’t get to your destination any faster than do the Great Unwashed who travels in coach. Next time I will spend that triple amount in the bar before I board the plane. I am sure that sobriety is over rated when it comes to dealing with toddlers.
