I’ll point out something that might not be obvious. I employed the “quote” button in the lower right-hand corner of your post; there’s one for every post. When I did that, your post came up in a new window, looking like this, except with square brackets instead of curly:
{quote}{i}Originally posted by BondJamesBond{/i}
{b}TO ALL: Yes, I made a lot of replies to this thread in the past hour or so.
I write this because some schmuch is going to point out the obvious.{/b}{/quote}
Also, Bond, it’s usual to highlight someone’s username, outside of a quote, by enclosing it in {b} {/b}.
Well I got to the part about the heartless cretins who don’t want to be stuck on airplanes with scremaing, wailing kids giving them migraines and then it started to sould like you were just screaming and wailing…
I’m neither stupid, nor a yuppy, and if you’ll notice my original post on this issue, I never stated the ages of my boys. I have a 12 year old, a 9 year old, and a 15 month old. I never made an assertion that 19 month olds can appreciate the Parthenon. I simply stated that ‘my boys’ could, and do, have more class, taste, and good breeding. You know, those manners folks have been talking about?
Also, how many 19 month olds have you raised to be polite young men? I’m working on my third, so I think I may know a little more about them and what they can potentially appreciate than you, nittanylion119.
Now, for those of you who, like me, do travel with children, I wanted to include some sites that I have found helpful in travelling with my family. Contrary to some beliefs, I don’t enrage my children and then turn them loose on an unsuspecting flightload of people.
I can’t stress that ‘bottle or pacifier during take-off/landing’ enough! The sucking and swallowing helps reduce the pressure on their inner ears. For the older ones, I have them chew gum. I’ve been travelling with my family for several years now, and I’ve never had an episode on a plane that was not unavoidable.
One last note: advocating or applauding the criminal assault on the innocent- man, woman, or child- is deplorable.
Ya know, airline flights are never comfortable. I’ve put up with other peoples children. My own children. A guy behind me that loudly complains if I recline and the guy in front of me reclined while sitting next to someone who takes up (like most people) more than the 19 inches allotted to him by the wisdom of airline management - all decreasing my personal space (and I have pretty high personal space needs). The yahoo who insists on banging the back of my seat (I have no idea what he was doing, I suspect playing with his tray table). I’ve dealt with the guy next to me not bathing, and the woman in front of me smelling like a French whore (sorry, Freedom whore, where is my sense of the Politally Correct in these trying times). Or the guy next to me with his walkman on, but loud enough that even I can enjoy the strong bass of music I wouldn’t be caught dead listening to and which is sure to induce a migraine. Not to mention the woman who gets on the plane with a nose rubbed raw from the cold she has who insists on sneezing on my tray table. Oh yeah - and then the airlines themselves - who can not seem to depart or arrive on time with anything resembling consistency - lose luggage - and when it does arrive, makes it take an hour to reach the carrosel from the plane. And can charge 100 different people 100 different prices for the same trip (no matter where you sit - because I’ve spent $700 to sit at the back of the plane on a short notice business trip).
Perhaps the solution is to drug everyone as they walk on the plane, so that the gripers are happy even if there is a crying baby, a teenager with a walkman turned too loud, or some yahoo making business calls at the top of his voice seated next to you. Some Valium passed round before takeoff is sure to make everyone much happier!
If you don’t want to rub elbows (and you will rub them on coach in a plane - and even first class will not free you from every inconvience) with the variety of humanity - in all ages, sizes, smells, sounds, buy yourself a private car on Amtrack or drive, or charter your own plane.
I’ve done my best to keep my kids off planes (we did take them to DisneyWorld, if you complain about kids on a flight to Orlando, you need to get a brain). We turned down a trip to Hawaii because an eight plus hour flight with two small children sounded like hell to me. My son did fly internationally as an infant - but he is a Korean adoptee, and that’s how you get those children home to their parents.
“If anyone at all tries to discipline the screaming wailing kid, their parents start in right away, not telling the kid to quit misbehaving, but telling the flight attendants or whoever else that they aren’t allowed to tell Junior to sit in his seat and stop shrieking.”
Well, thank god we don’t have any rash overgeneralizations going on in this thread!
Alright, fine, I’ll amend that to say that in the encounters I had with unruly kids on airplanes, I had the experience of being told off by a parent when I suggested to her that her little darling shouldn’t be climbing up my leg with cookie in hand, and that the flight attendant on another flight was chewed out for asking the 3 year old to please sit down.
Both of those times the mother in question did not discipline the kid, but instead got nasty at the person who pointed out a problem with the kid’s behavior on the plane.
Nice strawman, catsix. No one is talking about kids running all over other passengers.
They’re talking about kids crying. Which kids do. And sometimes, you can’t do anything about it.
Try being a two-year-old with an ear infection in a plane, where I would imagine the pressure would make it excruciating. I’ve had earaches and toothaches as an adult that have awoken me in the middle of the night where I could do nothing but lie on the bathroom floor curled into a fetal position sobbing.
I can assure you, that two-year-old is having worse time than you are.
As for your migraines, I seem to recall you telling some of us who suffer from severe periods to “suck it up” it can’t be that bad, so we shouldn’t call in sick to work.
So, since I’ve had migraines, I’m going to tell you the same damn thing-SUCK IT UP!
Read the thread, Guinastasia. I and other posters had already mentioned kids who run around like wild animals on planes, and I specifically mentioned at least twice the kid who climbed up my leg. Strawman my ass. Seems you were just in such a rush to post that you didn’t see the people who talked about kids who act like hyenas on planes.
I would shell out more money to be on a kid-free flight, and gladly because of assholes who do things like that, and the fact that I would rather not vomit all over the person sitting next to me due to a migraine. I go to work when I have them, and I continue to function, so as for you telling me to ‘suck it up’, that’s a royal laugh. I have never called in sick to work due to a migraine, ever. In my last five years of employment I’ve missed exactly three days of work, and all three of them involved me being at a doctor’s office and then at home after being ordered not to go to work. Someone who misses as much work as you shouldn’t be telling me to ‘suck it up.’
I don’t bail on my job when I’ve got a headache, but I don’t want a screaming kid causing one for me either. Kids who cannot be quiet do not belong in places where screaming and wailing won’t go over well, like movies, theaters, symphonies, expensive restaurants and airplanes. I’m not at all sorry that I don’t want to be made miserable by a kid who you can ‘assure’ me is having a ‘worse time’. Please, don’t hurt yourself rolling your eyes at me in self-righteous high-horse disgust. Then again with all the eye-rolling you do on this board, you probably have pretty strong muscles in there.
ya know, there are alternatives to taking baby out w/you to movies, restaurants and so on (don’t go, use a sitter). Airplanes - you’re paying to get from point a to point b in x amount of time. there aint’ necessarily an alternative to taking child with you. So, ya, unless you think that the parent has taking crabby, teething baby w/them on a transatlantic flight in order to piss you off personally, I’d suggest that you suck it up. As was pointed out, in close quarters (such as planes) there’s any number of offensive, bothering, annoying behaviors and conditions. at the very least w/a cranky crying child, it isn’t a case of ‘they know better’ etc.
the kids running around etc etc wasn’t the fucking point of the OP. the OP concerned a cranky crying infant who was poisoned by a flight attendant so (apparently) all those other folks wouldn’t have to be bothered by a crying child.
It’s an amazing thing to me that there’s any ‘well, maybe they had a semi good idea’.
You buy an airplane ticket to get from point a to point b in x amount of time. You’re not buying it for the relaxing journey, the comfy chairs, the chance to take a 4 hour nap, the yummy food and/or the delightful ambiance.
So the conversation can’t extend to other behavior by kids on airplanes that shouldn’t be happening but is because nobody’s actually watching the kid?
Not every instance of a kid screaming and wailing on a plane is due to some unavoidable problem that can’t be corrected, but I guess if all you ever want to do is beat to death the minute details of one instance, go for it. To some others, one incident is going to be the catalyst to discussing an entire range of behavior on airplanes, so it isn’t too surprising that the thread progressed from one crying kid on an airplane to other crying and wailing and misbehavior of kids on airplanes.
I read the thread, and while I did I noticed that the discussion progressed to include more than the one isolated event. Did you notice that?
And regardless of what history that flight attendant had, until there is actual proof that the flight attendant is the one who spiked the juice, I’m not ready to convict. Having the juice hanging around for ten days before even notifying anyone of the suspected tampering seems fishy as all hell. It doesn’t stand to reason that someone would leave juice in a cup for a little kid for over a week without ever washing that cup or replacing the juice, especially after it had been carted around unrefrigerated.
catsix, how many kids do you have? 'Cause I have two, and I have left a juice cup in the diaper bag for a week or two before dumping it out and throwing it away. Especially if said juice cup is someplace I don’t normally carry it (say, a carryon bag, or the diaper bag I use for long trips - the diaper bag for short trips, my purse, or my coat pocket get cleaned of their contents more often.)
I know there are better Moms (and more cost aware moms, I have spent a small fortune in sippy cups) who wash their cups out the moment their toddler drops it from their hands. But we aren’t all like that.
In fact, at this moment, I know for a fact that there is a rather scary sippy cup in my car that has been under the seat at least a month. I’m afraid of it.
I don’t know about you, but if I were on the jury ‘she waited ten days to have the stuff analyzed, and then she took it to a private lab rather than contacting police’ seems like reasonable doubt to me.
I have some doubts of my own about what’s going on, although like I said, she may have tried to find a place to have it done. I don’t know jackshit about how you would do that, so I can’t say. I personally wouldn’t have waited.
That being said, I was mostly talking to Bond, who seems to condone such action, if it happened. Yes, crying children are annoying. However, an airplane ride is not a guarantee of tranquility.
In case you got the wrong impression, I don’t advocate the drugging of someone else’s kid on a plane to knock them out for the duration of the flight.
I do think that based on some experiences I personally have had that there are times kid-behavior could be better controlled by parents and can understand the level of frustration someone feels at unruly behavior.
This particular thread happened to remind me of the chocolate-cookie kid climbing his way up my suit, which is one instance in which I think the parent should’ve restrained their kid rather than taking attitude with me for not wanting my clothing potentially ruined by a chocolate stain as I returned from a full day interview and being stuck over-night in Laguardia airport because of a storm.
Yeah pretty likely. As it was I ended up with one chocolate stain on my suit, which the dry cleaner managed to lighten enough that it didn’t totally ruin the suit.
Mommy dear didn’t even bother to offer some cash so I could get that stain caused by lil tyke cleaned.
