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July 17, 2008
Babies on a plane
baby looking through airplane window, originally uploaded by daveweekes68.
Well folks, I'm back in Ohio for a couple days to visit the family and study for the bar, and naturally I shuffled to Midway for a jolly 50-minute flight to Columbus. I love to sit next to the window and look out at the scenery, so today I squeezed in next to a flight attendant who was coming along for the ride as a passenger. (This is Southwest, where you can pick any seat you want.)
I sat in my seat and twiddled my thumbs for a few minutes, when all of a sudden I heard the flight attendant whisper "look away and don't make eye contact, then she won't sit between us." It took about ten seconds to realize that there was a woman with a baby coming down the aisle, and so I averted my gaze, started at the seat in front of me, and prayed. The woman with the baby walked by, and our middle seat was taken by a non-baby-carrying, middle-aged, businesswoman. The baby howled the entire flight, so we were doubly lucky. That baby was a ticking time bomb, and it could've gone off next to us.
The attendant and I exchanged glances of relief, but I have to giggle when I think about how blunt she was about it. Don't make eye contact - like we're trying to avoid a homeless person, or those people who ask you for a minute of your time to save the environment/the children/the Democratic Party.
Of course, people have a right to take babies on flights. I'm not disputing that, and I would never be in favor of an airline banning babies from flights. Nor am I the kind of guy who gets uppity when children misbehave in restaurants. But you can't believe anyone else on the plane wants to risk being near a crying baby for an hour or more with no way out. For that reason, I will definitely file away my fellow traveler's baby-avoidance theory for the next time one is near me on an airplane.
entry no. 1188
Posted at July 17, 2008 08:45 PM