My sweetie-baby-cutie-pie-wifey-pooh and I have a system for packing for trips. This system is fairly common practice for people that have attended, are attending, or may attend the ‘Last Minute School of Preparation’. Although for the record, we did not pack last minute for our Hawaii trip… we packed three minutes prior to last minute. I always look at last minute as, well, just that. The fact that Angela and I got to take a two hour nap before driving to the airport I feel shows you our proficiency at packing just before the last minute.
There are a few things that acting, or in our case packing, last minute enables you to experience. Here are a few of my personal favorites:
- The a fore mentioned two hour nap. I’m a fan of naps, and even though I will most likely be sleeping on the plane to whatever destination a waits, starting a flight with a nap that is just long enough to leave me sleepy is a nice preparatory event before I begin my on plane nap.
- No double-checking your luggage before leaving. It means that I will always have the Goonies adventure quality about my trip. Because I don’t have time to double-check my bags there is no telling if I remembered everything and it isn’t until I’m in the middle of a hotel room in a new city, country, planet, etc. were I discover if I am going to need to get creative about doing my hair because I forgot a brush, or that I need to get out into my new environment to experience my new surroundings and find a store that sells what I forgot. (I only used a plastic fork to comb my hair for the first day. When Angela caught me using it, she made us go to a store to buy a small cheap brush for the trip.)
- The giggles. In my experience it is inevitable that, at some point in the late night hours when I am tired and wanting to go to sleep but am still packing, I hit that loopy stage where everything is so much funnier than it would have been had I actually gotten some sleep. I’ve never felt bad about an uncontrollable giggle fit and packing three minutes to ‘last minute’ is always good for at least one of those… sometimes more.
The flight to Hawaii was in two parts. The first flight went to Phoenix Arizona. I slept through the whole thing. I attempted the nodding off routine of falling asleep in an upright sitting position, but when my head dropped down for the first nod it didn’t come back up until an hour later when the captain announced that we had begun our decent to Phoenix. It was grand. The flight from Phoenix to Maui on the other hand was a flyway to hell (feel free to sing that in your best AC/DC voice).
You know that feeling when you get an ice cream cone filled with two scoops of your favorite flavors and just as you step out of the store, even before you have taken a single lick, your hands fumble and you watch in Hollywood slow motion as your treat of creamy goodness falls to the ground to become completely inedible crushing your dreams that there is anything good in this world? Yeah, well I had that exact same feeling when I walked onto the airplane and saw two of the three seats in front of me being occupied by little kids. The mother sitting in the middle seat separating the two children is what gave me a false sense of hope that maybe it wasn’t going to be ‘that bad’. Damn you ‘false sense of hope’ and your deceitful ways.
The sperm donor, I mean father, was in the chair across the aisle. Actually scratch that, he was a donor because during the six plus hours on the flight I saw him do zero in regards to being a father. In fact I would give him negative points because at only one point during the flight did he remove his headphones and stopped watching movies on his iPad. It was during this iPad break that his wife actually told him, “I need some help. I am asking you to help me.” His response to this was to put his head phones back on and ignore her and the kids with even more vigor than he had done before.
The little boy was by far the more horrid of the two evils, er kids, mainly because he would not shut the hell up. Seriously, for the entire flight he did not stop talking once. And the extent of the mother’s parental ability was to remain sitting in her seat and say “shhhhh” repeatedly and then ignore the kids. At one point the little monster had to go to the toilet. He did this by announcing to the entire plane that he had to poop. Then, because there was a line to get to the toilet, he spent five minutes waiting for his turn standing in the aisle announcing that he needed to poop. He even informed the mother at one point that he was just going to poop in the aisle. The mother had the insight to hold on to his hand while they waited in line after his started to undo his belt after the pooping in the aisle comment.
You know, I miss the days when parents would beat their children. Not with the excitable vigor of Rocky Balboa taking on the USSR, but a nice heartfelt smack on the rump when the kids were being little shi… fecal matters. I mean I know it’s the parents fault, but perhaps if the parents had been beaten as children then they would have not grown up to be such worthless parents themselves. Besides, let’s say a kid throws a fit on a plane and is making the plane ride a horrific experience for everyone on the plane, I think that spanking the child in front of all of those people would be a nice way to publically apologize to everyone on that plane for your failure as a parent and your child’s lack of behavior. I know I’d appreciate seeing the little bastard getting a quick smack on the butt. I’d probably even say thank you.
Now even though I’m a reverend I’m not the type of person to bless people. However, if I thought it would do any good I would bless this family with infertility, sterility, barrenness, and unfruitfulness … and a lifetime of failures in the adoption department. I mean sure let them have a long full life and die of natural causes, but family lines go extinct all the time; I just happen to be of the opinion that this family is one that deserves be part of the family line extinction.
However, there was one positive thing that happened from all of this, the sheer nirvana I felt getting off of that plane and away from that family. Sometimes it’s the little things you have to take with you and that one lasted the entire time I was in Maui. Hell, it even got me through the two and a half hour delay and entire plane ride home.
What are your thoughts on the topic of bad kids and worse parents?
Image Sources:
Google Images, keywords: last minute, unpacking suitcase, bad kids on plane, depressed, bad parents, and happy day.
As a mom with 2 reasonably well behaved children, I will admit flying can be rough. First, I threaten them with all the horrible things I can possibly think of in order to keep them quiet. They are actually pretty good. We have coloring books, a portable DVD player and a variety of snacks. On our return home from a recent cruise, they did fight over the window seat at the beginning of each flight. Considering they’d been up since 7am that morning, stood in line at customs for 2 hours and sat at the airport for 5 hours… I’d say arguing over the window seat was a reasonable outburst. That being said, parents who let their children be naughty should be fined heavily by the airlines! And the sperm donor who simply ignored the mother’s plea for help should have his fingers squished between the arm of the chair and the refreshment cart! So, my question to you is… WHY didn’t you stand up and tell the kid to SHUT HIS TRAP??? Just sayin’! Thanks, Rich! This was probably one of the funniest Smirks yet.
Actually I did say something. The little girl was playing a game on the second iPad, yes they had two, with the volume turned all the way up. So every few seconds there was the sound of a bird screaming and then the sound of a lot of glass breaking or a thud or something like that. If I had to guess they were playing the game ‘Angry Birds’. After 20 minutes of this constantly disrupting every attempt to doze off (even for a few minutes), I tapped on the mothers shoulder and asked if they had some head phones the kid could use because it was very loud. No apology, she just said “Oh” but did manage to to give the kid some headphones. 10 minutes later the kid stopped playing the game and wanted to sit next to her brother, which she let happen… which only turned into a yelling match between the two monsters until the mother sat between them again. I now understand fully why some animals choose to eat their young. If every there was a poster family to help encourage people to use birth control this family was a top contender.
I think a good measure to utilize here would be to lean over and calmly explain that bad children have been known to cause perfectly good planes to suddenly explode into huge fireballs that crash back down to earth. Then sit back and smirk to this child and say not another word. Periodically, make explosive noises to remind the little bastard that there are far worse things in this world, than his mommy this and mommy that and watch me crap myself in the isle shenanigans. As for the parents who look on with disgust at your own threats, maybe they too can gain some life changing knowledge and parent differently on the return flight.
Haha, brilliant! I’ll keep that in the event I ever find myself in this situation again.