A Tale of 2 Lap Babies

Story 1 – Last year I was sitting in First Class for my 5 hour flight, and I noticed that there was a Lap Baby present. The child was clean and dressed in nice but comfy clothes. The parents were equally well dressed. The child was happy, and took pleasure in attention in an undemanding way. When the child got a little fussy (once….in 5 hours), the parents quickly conferred with each other, and Mom took the child to the bathroom promptly.


Story 2 – Three days ago, I was sitting in First Class for my 5 hour flight, and I noticed there was a Lap Baby present. The child was sloppy in a threadbare onesie pajama. The parents were dressed in a fashion that…well…I honestly had to wonder how in fuck they’d managed to be seated in First Class (my first thought was that a Walmart somewhere was missing some customers). The child was frequently screaming, and when it wasn’t, it tried to crawl over the backs of seats to reach for the heads of folks sitting behind, or was on the floor grabbing the ankles of the folks sitting in front. It was eventually handed off to stewardesses who practically demanded the kid after 5 minutes of the parents just ignoring the shrieks (they were able to keep the kid quiet…but the parents couldn’t? Hmm).

After the Lap Baby in First Class last year, I had been pleased that there were still people who took the trouble to take care of their kids, and see to it those children were not a burden to others. I had been happy to share First Class with this peaceful and responsible little family who made me feel a glow that their child would be part of the future.

Then I encountered the striped pajama monkey three days ago. If anything, the difference between the 2 stories highlights the difference between parents and breeders. Parents do not assume the world at large is responsible for, or has to put up with their children. Ever. Breeders assume that children are meant to be tolerated….by themselves and everyone else. Nice.

Thing is…I travel First Class as much as possible just so I can avoid small children. It’s not that I can’t put up with cranky kids on a short flight, anyone can do that. But my flights are NEVER short. At least one leg of my travel is going to be about 4 to 5 hours no matter what. That is a long time to put up with disruptive children. Especially the ones travelling as Lap Babies. What are people really saving by not purchasing a seat for their young child? This depends highly on the length of flight of course.

Think of a young child as a wiggly little thermonuclear reactor that makes various levels of noise in relation to its discomfort. Ever have a cat sit on your legs? It’s sleeping peacefully, and you don’t want to disturb it…but your thighs are cooking off and your feet are asleep! How long can you tolerate just the weight and increasing heat of a housecat on your lap? Time it. Seriously. Find out just how long you can tolerate that. If you are miserable after an hour...think of how you will feel cramped in a plane seat with dry air and pressure changes, turbulence, or overhead announcements upsetting your very young child.

Also consider…eventually (after your legs have fallen off) the cat finally gets to feeling too warm, and moves off your lap. At least, it’s going to try to. You have to force it to stay right there. I hope your cat is declawed. What happens when your lap baby overheats on the plane? If you have someone travelling with you, at least you can pass the kid back and forth and that cuts down on some of the discomfort for all involved, but it doesn’t relieve much if the child in question is just plain tired of being held. If you think the vocalizations of the protesting cat are annoying, just wait until junior starts up because he doesn’t get that you can’t put him down. Unless you are one of those people who doesn’t realize the travel realities of beverage carts and people going to the bathroom, or you just don’t care…you cannot reasonably put your baby on the floor of a commercial aircraft.

Oh, and if you are one of those people who think your child has every right to be wherever you put them even the aircraft floor, other people and service personnel be damned, consider this: Just how well do you imagine the plane is cleaned between flights? Those maintenance folks are in a hurry, and stuff is often missed. I once found some of the stuff that gets missed, and guess what? Folks taking insulin shots can be just as inconsiderate and thoughtless as Entitle-Moos who think their kid should be able to crawl everywhere they want. I found used insulin needles in the magazine pocket once. You need to read that again? I found USED NEEDLES!

One can only guess what charming wonders your little one could find on the floor. Would you like to guess how many prescription pills accidently get dropped during a flight? Some of that stuff is potent. Not even a whole intact pill would be needed to affect a young child, and you know everything that touches their hands will eventually end up in their mouth. Even if it’s just powdered remains of a pill crushed into the floor the vacuum cleaner missed, the results could be life threatening. Would you let your infant crawl around licking the floor of a New York subway car? No? What is the difference besides less graffiti and a little more upholstery?

But what the heck, let’s say your baby is truly a wonder. It falls asleep on every flight, never cries, and never wants to roam the aircraft. It is perfectly and blissfully content to smile at appreciative stewardesses and fellow passengers in passing, and makes Tibetan Monks look agitated and disruptive in comparison. You are very lucky.

It still might be good to get an idea of the frequency of clear air turbulence on your flight route before you decide to just lap your baby. Taking a look at sites like this could be helpful, but it’s a sketchy and unreliable sort of prediction. Especially if you are booking a flight a couple months in advance, a few days of clear air turbulence tracking is not going to be that useful. People can get injured by clear air turbulence. And only the people wearing seat belts diligently (even when the sign is turned off) are going to be safe from being bounced around like a dried pea in a tin can.

I know air travel is safer than travelling by car. That is going to be true if you consider crashes to be the only significant danger of travelling by air, but as I pointed out with the needles and dropped medications earlier, what you need to be concerned with are specific dangers that affect YOUR CHILD. We already know that we cannot physically hold children safe from the force of inertia in a minor car collision we can see coming. Do you really believe you can be more successful against inertia when you can’t see it coming? The danger of clear air turbulence is minimized in our minds, despite knowing it can cause injuries and fatalities, simply because it rarely results in the crashing of the entire plane. The news of 2 people dying from getting knocked around is overwhelmed by the relief that they whole plane did not go down.

If a grown adult at 120+ lbs can be fatally knocked around as a result of clear air turbulence, do I really need to point out what happens to a 20 lb. lap baby? My imagination doesn’t really want to go there, and it doesn't have to. There are some descriptions in the articles linked in the next paragraph.

But if it’s really a danger, why do airlines allow lap children? I can hear you asking me that. Because when you consider the biggest risk being clear air turbulence…the odds are in your favor. The airlines are willing to let you take that risk based on those odds. They do not want to lose revenue and use the travel statistic of air being safer than car as their justification to allow unsafe practices. See? And there’s this article, and this one. And no surprise, there are those trying to abolish the practice….but like every safety feature and FAA regulation…rules are not laid down without sufficient blood.

I may not want kids, and I may find screaming babies annoying as hell, but I think they do deserve more safety consideration than they are currently getting from the FAA. And given that consideration, even story 1 with the good lap baby deserves a little more parental awareness. When every other mode of transportation requires safety seats by law…you have to wonder why the FAA would just say it’s okay to “hold ‘em on your lap”. This is Federally Endorsed Neglect disguised by “intent to help you save money” folks. YOU are required to wear the seat belt, secure your property, and even secure THEIR crappy tray table (that is broken ½ the time)…but your kid? Nah. Just hold it.

Either accept that children cost travel money as much as you do, and see to their safe transportation, or do not travel until they are big enough to justify the cost (for you) of purchasing a seat.

Entitle-Moo and Tween Invade Post Office

So yesterday I had to mail a box. The day before yesterday was a Federal holiday, so I had a pretty good idea that it would be busy when I got there.

Sure enough…major line. I share an understanding nod with a couple folks in front of me, and settled in to wait.

Suddenly, the door bangs open, and in storms this little tween girl, who takes in the sight of the line and loudly begins to exclaim about its length. Her mother follows her into the postal office, and starts exclaiming even louder than her tween about all the people in line. Like what the hell were WE all doing there?

So then moo-om gets in line behind me, and tells her kid to go linger where the postal workers can see her, maybe they would be “nice” and disregard everyone else because she had been in earlier a couple hours ago. I’m happy to say that did not work.

They had been there before trying to track down the boots this kid ordered from China. The tween had filled out the delivery instruction for where she lived instead of where she would be, and there was now a routing issue. How do I know? Moo-om couldn’t shuddup about it. For half of the tirade, I really don’t know who she was talking to as I sure never turned around. A guy got in line behind them (after sulky brat came back from making the try to hop the line), and then moo-om took his courtesy hostage, but prior to the man’s arrival I guess she was ranting at the world at large before he got in line. Charming.

I can say everyone in line felt the same way about this woman and her kid because everyone’s shoulders would tighten in unison every time the woman spoke. The guy in front of me turned just enough to give me a sympathetic look (bitch was practically yelling in my ear) before facing forward again.

The tween kept exclaiming, loudly, about how pissed she’s going to be if the postal workers don’t hand over her boots. Now…my mother would actually have gotten after me for saying something like that. It’s not that she never got pissed off at people, but she made it very clear to me that it wasn’t appropriate to get pissed at people until they’d earned it. Openly and loudly planning to be pissed off (basically threatening people), was inappropriate.

Not according to this girl’s moo-om apparently. She was in total agreement with her rude little sprat. Really fun was when they’d caught sight of the guy who’d tried to help them before. Tween exclaiming (at volume still) that she didn’t want help from that “Asian guy” after he’d “screwed them up last time”. As if she could alter random chance while the line was still 10 people deep, and dictate which of the employees were going to give her service.

I was sort of amused in a way. She didn’t want service from the Asian employee at the post office after ordering footwear from China. I would have pointed out the irony if it didn’t mean actually having to talk to these people. Rather doubt they would have appreciated it anyway.

It was as if everything that went through this kid’s head had to come spewing forth from her mouth. No filter at all. Nor volume control. My mom would have sent my rude ass to the car, or more likely threaten to take us out of there all together as I clearly did not deserve the effort she was expending to help me get my boots, and I could just wait until the postal service sorted the issue out.

I almost wish I’d hung around to see how their encounter with the Postal Workers went. But by the time I got my package sent off, I just wanted to put some miles between myself and them.

As I left, I wondered how and when this tween girl was going to be slammed with the fact that the world did not actually revolve around her. Not that awareness and realization of that were guaranteed if her moo-om were any example. She’d pretty clearly missed that memo herself somehow. And was active and eager to influence her daughter's "social skills" shudder