Dear 21B,
You may not remember me, but you have been stuck in my mind all week, or at least since Monday night.
Just to refresh your memory, you and your son, Sean Michael sat directly behind Husband, Elliot and me. It was the 8pm flight from Seattle to Sacramento. We were the family with the four month old. You were the middle aged man with the four year old.
I'm sorry I didn't tell you then what I'd like to tell you now.
You are that apple. And by "apple," I mean the bad kind, the kind that ruins it for all of the rest of us.
It was a packed flight, including about 25 children ranging from Elliot's age to about twelve or so. And other than a few moments of crying from Elliot, the only children anyone heard from the entire time was Sean Michael and your twins across the aisle.
Normally, I wouldn't care so much or even expect you to remember us, except part of Sean Michael's antics involved him slamming his feet into the back of my seat on irregular*, yet frequent intervals.
And with every single slam, Elliot would wake up long enough to whimper and shift and occasionally bump his head just a bit. And every single time, I shifted, turned as much as I could and said, "Please!"
It was not that you were oblivious to this. You gently chided him and bargained with him and threatened him with "If you don't stop, that lady with the baby is going to stand up and ask you herself to stop."
And you were just as loud and twice as cloying as your son. I am not a violent person but I was having an overwhelming desire to punch you in the nose.
And I would have** except I was too crunched in and didn't want to move and disturb Elliot any more than I had to. By this point we had been traveling for more than 20 hours and we were all fried. Husband's glares were no good. And so this went on for more than two hours.
Your son is clearly intelligent. He spotted planes and asked questions.*** If either of you sounded like a dope, it was not him.****
You were loud and whiny and ineffective.
And you, not your son, made both Elliot and me cry a bit.
But the worst part of all is that you and Sean Michael are going to be what everyone remembers.***** And you will be the case in point for all the misanthropes who occasionally like to declare that children should not be allowed to travel.
I hate this because while I am only four months into the whole parenting thing and realize that while I cannot control every bit of his behavior and mood---I am going to do my best to try to help him manage his actions especially in public.
While we hope to go on some vacations alone, Husband and I intend to take Elliot with us when we travel. We want him to gather experiences, navigate situations and learn to behave in public without infringing on his fellow travelers. Plus he's our family and in lots of cases, where we go, he goes.
So thanks for giving the anti-child travelers a wealth of munition.
And when I say wealth, I mean it because, as I cradled Elliot in my arms, I was calculating just how much extra I would pay for a no-child-allowed flight.
And at that moment, the number was crawling up.
Sincerely,
Elizabeth
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
*It felt much like one of those experiments with the rats. The experiment where the rats are slowly driven mad because they know the pellet of food is coming, they just don't know when and in what quantity.
**Maybe not really, but I was thinking mean thoughts and lots of them.
***The questions ranged from "How do planes fly?" to "What would happen if two planes rammed into each other in the air?"
****That said, no one thinks your child is charmingly precocious other than you. His obnoxious behavior coupled with your impotence in controlling him canceled out every single bit of good will.
*****The reason I know this is because several people stopped me at the baggage claim and as we were waiting on Husband to pull around. They complimented me on calming Elliot quickly and derided you. And when I mentioned that we were the people right in front of you, they offered their sympathy. It was so nice, I got teary more than once.
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