Based on this feeble "Flying with kids? Ack!" Dave Barry impression, NYT conservative columnist David Brooks should stick to spinning his musings from the checkout line at Whole Foods into all-encompassing social theories:
It is an iron rule of plane travel that the parents who are trying to hush their children are more annoying to their fellow passengers than the children who are being hushed. Accordingly, other fliers in the area begin to develop hostile feelings toward the desperately shushing parents.Pain, Agony, Despair: Flying With Children [nytimes.com]Anybody who thinks it takes a village to raise a child has never sat near a crying baby in first class. In these circumstances, if it were up to the village, somebody would be stapling the brat's mouth shut and somebody else would be locking mom in the overhead storage compartment.
A "Children on Airplane" story! How breathtakingly unoriginal.
Wow. I've been avoiding reading that since I saw it in the NYT yesterday. Brooks is seriously the worst.
I saw the article a couple of days ago and thought it was humorous. Other than when cherubs kicking the back of my seat, I could agree that the most irritating thing was when parents grossly overreacted to their darlings actions. I just wanted to tell them to shut up. If they did, the kids would settle better with calm parents.
This was long before I became a mommy. Now, I dread the high possibility that I might be traveling with husband & tot on a long trans-Atlantic flight next February. I don't WANNA go back to the States... especially in a cramped & hot aircraft. It was hellish flight and I haven't been back on another plane since.
Of course, there will be lots of other parents sharing the misery with their children too, so I won't be alone.
Maybe I'll just take some really good cold medicine so I won't remember anything. Just knock me out please!!!