He Wouldn’t…Stop…Crying…

I flew back on a redeye last Friday night from doing business in LA (working on another episode of “Young Justice”). I like redeyes. I can usually sleep on them, so the flight becomes effectively instantaneous and I don’t waste a whole day traveling.

On this particular flight, there was a mom with a a little boy, a little over a year old, seated directly behind me. He started crying from the moment they sat down.

And he didn’t…stop. Not through the opening announcements. Not through take off or travel. His voice penetrated my noise-killing earphones with ease.

He wasn’t in pain. He wasn’t hungry. He just didn’t want to sit still. At all. But the crew didn’t want him tearing up and down the aisle for obvious reasons.

And on the rare occasions when he did stop crying and I would start to drift asleep, he’d start kicking the back of my seat and wake me up. I didn’t say anything because I figured the mother had enough problems. And then at one point he stopped kicking my chair AND he was quiet, so I actually fell asleep. This lasted five minutes as I was violently awoken by the screaming match between the woman seated next to me and the boy’s mother because the kid had started kicking HER seatback and she chose not to take it in stride.

At the end of the flight, I gently suggested to the haggard mother the advantages of Children’s Dramamine before a lengthy night flight. She said wearily, “I tried it. It just made him MORE active.”

I shudder to think what THAT flight was like.

Feel free to use this space for your traveling horror stories.

PAD

62 comments on “He Wouldn’t…Stop…Crying…

  1. I don’t know if it’s a horror story, but we recently used Amtrak for the first time in a decade to go to Reno/Tahoe and back. And it was on time both ways!
    .
    But the ‘horror’ was on the way back, a guy got on the train and sat behind us. He spent some time on the phone being far too loud about the fact that he seemed to fancy his 17 year old daughter’s friends, all the various ladies he’s hoping to bag, etc. We ended up moving our seats.
    .
    A couple of hours later, I saw him sitting somewhere else and chatting away with a young woman. I just wanted to tell her openly and loudly about his phone conversation.
    .
    Now, as for a real horror story, the last time we did use Amtrak, our train was 3 hours late getting here, and then we ended up an additional 5 hours late in getting where we were going. Delays due to waiting on freight trains to pass, work on the tracks, and, the worst, the train losing power.
    .
    The last of those happened in southern Iowa, when it was about 90 degrees out in the middle of August, and the humidity made it feel well over 100. No A/C, no air movement at all in the upper parts of the car; the only air in the lower parts was because we could open the window on the door. And we sat there for about an hour and a half while the cars turned into ovens.
    .
    We were fortunate to avoid a similar situation last year on our Baltic Sea cruise with Disney. For the stop at Warnemunde, Germany, they had an ‘excursion’ to Berlin. The train ride was about 3 hours each way. Well, Europe was going through a bit of a heat wave at the time, and some of those trains to Berlin were not only packed, but ended up having no A/C.
    .
    Meanwhile, we went to Schwerin on our own on a mostly empty, completely air conditioned train. 🙂

    1. My wife and I prefer Amtrak travel as well. This is not a horror story, but just an inconsiderate passenger story:
      .
      Traveling to you New Orleans one time, my wife and I had just sat down for dinner and they decided to sit another person at our table. I’m usually not too keen on that, but I know it’s the norm on trains. Well, for the entire meal this guy complains about everything. The food is cold, the wine is warm… on and on and on.
      .
      It finally got to the point where I said that I don’t think the meal was nearly as bad as he was making it out to be. He then leaned over and whispered to me: “I know, but the more you complain, there’s a better chance for a free meal.”
      .
      My wife and I finished quickly then and walked off. As we were leaving the car, we shook the hand of our server and exclaimed quite loudly how much we ALL enjoyed our meal & service at the table.
      .
      The dirty look I received from our tablemate was well worth it.
      .
      I hate people who try to steal.

      1. Yeah, on this trip, when we did eat in the meal car, we sat with companionable strangers each time.
        .
        One pair was an English couple who were going all over the western US. As this was the week before the Royal Wedding, they were asked about whether they were going to regret missing it. And their response was basically, “Hëll no.” 🙂

  2. Just recently I had to travel from Valencia to Barcelona to sort a consular matter. Without realizing it, I booked my trip for the Monday after Easter, which is a local holiday in both Valencia and Barcelona. It was using something that they call a “Cercanias” train, which is basically like any regular city metro/train with only slightly better chairs and places where to store luggage. It travels incredibly slow and there are no assigned seats. I was lucky because I got on at the beginning of the line, so I was able to sit down, but the bášŧárdš clearly overbooked the train, to the point that not only were all the seats taken, but the whole train was filled with people standing up (and their luggage!) filling the aisles. It was impossible to get up to go to the restroom or just plainly stretch your legs from all the people crowding the cars (and this was 5 hour trip). The bášŧárdš could have easily filled another train, but instead they sold tickets to people knowing full well that there was no way to fit them all into a single train.

    Not as bad as the baby crying throughout the flight, but I felt really bad for the people that had to stand for hours.

    1. Spending hours tightly packed in a standing room only rail car isn’t necessarily all that bad. It happened to me once on the Hiroshima/Osaka high speed run, the only such time in fact, but I didn’t mind at all. In the interest of full disclosure, the fact that most of the other passengers seemed to be bodycon models may have had something to do with it being more bearable than might otherwise have been the case.

  3. I don’t think my stories can top crying/screaming/kicking kid, but I remember a few years back during the winter season in South Bend, IN I was trying to catch the South Shore train to Chicago. Enough snow dropped and ice had formed that about a third of the way there the lights started to flicker and eventually the train went to a crawl. We made it to a way station where they tried to locate the electrical problem, but couldn’t. So they rammed everyone that from the six cars into one, disconnected the damaged cars and added a different set. We made it to Chicago an hour late and I nearly missed my Amtrak connection to Milwaukee. Naturally it was a smelly, whiny 30 minutes of elbow-to-elbow of people plus midway through the Amtrak trip the lights started to flicker…luckily we pressed onward to our destination.

  4. I must’ve done something in a prior life, because I’ve never had any bad experiences on the numerous flights I’ve been to. Hëll, the last time I went to Italy for my cousin’s wedding, I sat in the middle section all the way in the back of the plane, near the flight attendants’ area, and since travel was low or something (even though this was December 11 and December 23), I had empty seats on both sides. On the way there, I got to doze off or just veg out with the stack of new comics I had brought, which included the conclusion to “The Sinestro Corps War”. I can’t remember what I read on the way back, but I had a nice conversation with the French woman seated two seats to my left. The only bad memory I had from it was that it was on that flight that I developed an earache that was the onset of a really bad cold, which I gathered I got from a virus passed to me by someone at the wedding reception the prior evening.
    .
    My flights to and from Albuquerque for a business trip in June 2008 were also uneventful. ABQ was nice, dry heat (though I had to remember to wear a baseball cap, because I got a headache one day when I forgot to), the people there are incredibly friendly, etc.
    .
    Must be good travel karma, or something.

  5. The thing that really annoys me is that on just about every flight I’ve taken over the last couple of years is that there always seems to be at least one crying child on the flight. They will cry almost the entire time and miraculously, just about 10-15 minutes before we land, they will fall asleep. Needless to say, the temptation to wake them up is almost overwhelming. That being said, I pretty much always wear headphones of some kind most of the time I’m on a plane and that generally takes care of the problem.

    1. That was actually the subject of a Bill Cosby monologue, in which he describes how a youngster named Jeffrey kept everyone on the plane (in First Class, no less) awake for the entirety of a red eye…and then fell asleep shortly before the plane landed. At which point the adults, in filing off the plane, “took great delight in waking Jeffrey up. GOOD-BYE JEFFREY!” “Waaaaah!”
      .
      You can find it on youtube easily enough.
      .
      PAD

  6. I have sympathy for a mom with a crying kid…but letting him kick your seat is inexcusably inconsiderate.
    .
    Once sat next to a very ugly guy who smelled, snored, passed gas, and kept elbowing me in the ribs as he slept. basically, he assaulted 4 out of my 5 senses, leaving out only taste, for which I am forever grateful.

    1. I literally don’t think she was aware of it. She was no less exhausted than anyone else, and perhaps moreso. I think she had actually drifted off and was oblivious to what he was doing because it was one of the brief times that he’d stopped crying.
      .
      PAD

      1. Her comment about Dramamine suggests she knows the kid’s a holy terror on trips. Fine, if she can afford to fly, she can afford a sitter. Leave the kid at home rather than knowingly making life hëll for everybody on the flight.

      2. What the reply about Dramamine suggests to me is that the kid probably has undiagnosed ADHD (not surprising – it was overdiagnosed so much for a while that many parents won’t even consider it).
        .
        If that is indeed the case, she should try loading him up with caffeine. It’s called a paradoxic response – many ADHD subjects will get hopped up on things that should soothe them, and calmed down by stimulants. (That’s why Ritalin works for kids with real ADHD – it’s basically a legal form of speed, but they respond to it as if it were thorazine…)

      3. Don’t make those assumptions, StarWolf. Perhaps she was visiting a terminally ill family member who would only get to meet their grandchild once in their lifetime.
        .
        There are plenty of legitimate reasons for people to fly with babies, and not all babies can sleep on a flight. Yes, it’s annoying to the other passengers. But as a parent of a child who — well, I might tell that story here soon — trust me, however difficult it may have been for you (who wasn’t even on that flight), it was infinitely moreso for the mother.
        .
        At least from PAD’s description, this mother was aware of the difficulty and doing her best. My heart is with her.

      4. Saul – It’s not impossible. But what are the odds? As described it doesn’t appear to have been the first time it had happened to her. It’s like fiancee having a rather expensive theatre experience ruined by parents who were sitting right behind her, their screeching brat making its noisy presence known all the while. What was their excuse? Parents have a responsibility to their child first and foremost. But they don’t exist in a vacuum and also have responsibilities to those around them at any given time.

      5. .
        “Fine, if she can afford to fly, she can afford a sitter. Leave the kid at home rather than knowingly making life hëll for everybody on the flight”
        .
        And if part of the reason for the trip is for them, the kid included, to see family?
        .
        Besides, she may be able to afford to fly or pay for a sitter, but not be able to afford both. If her flight took her away from home for a week, whether it was personal or business, the cost of the kid’s ticket was likely way less than 24/7 babysitting.

      6. Kids are kids and they can’t be expected to be little angels 24/7. It’s unrealistic to expect her to forgo ever traveling again until he gets older.
        .
        he may have been in pain–kids often get earaches on airplanes.
        .
        I think she should at least have been careful not to have him kicking the back of a seat (which drives me absolutely crazy) but as PAD said, she might have been asleep herself. I’ve seen kids who made everyone’s life miserable and the parents only concern was to take umbrage to anyone who was bothered by it. This doesn’t sound like that was the case.

      7. Planes should be like restaurants. A different area for people with kids, so that they wouldn’t bother the rest of us. They do it with smokers, they should do it with noisy people too.
        .
        Saul, I don’t have any sympathy for the parents. They should know that being a parent would entail this kind of bother. They signed up for it. Now please, spare the rest of us.
        .
        But, like I said below, at least kids can’t help themselves. I have greater scorn for noisy, adult people. Give me a crying brat anytime over people with loud music; people who loudly explain all about their diseases, medical treatments, and surgical procedures; and small groups that shout and jeer at each other the whole trip.
        .
        Whatever happened to courtesy? Or at least the shame of making an spectacle of yourself to people you don’t even know?

      8. Actually, based on some stuff she said (and she was transferring to a plane to Rochester, so fun time for other passengers) I got the impression she was going to visit her mother for Mother’s Day.
        .
        Lucky Grandma.
        .
        PAD

      9. I get “if you can afford a movie ticket, you can afford a sitter.” But how does plane ticket = sitter cost? Unless you’re literally flying out and back for a day, are you seriously saying that paying for 24/7 sitter expenses is something that parents should be expected to do?

        Howabout, instead, you say if you’re going to use public transportation, accept the fact that you’re going to have some public experiences imposed on you. Otherewise, there’s a whole world of charter and air-taxi service available for you where you can pay for luxury of not having to sit with the rest of the public.

      10. Bobb B – *Shrug* My parents managed it and they were never more than very average middle class. They had to be away on business for a few days? Live-in sitter. End of problem.

  7. We were coming home from a vacation in the Cayman Islands. I was 5 years old, my brother was 3 (this was back in the late 70’s). In Miami, my mother decided she wanted to visit her friend in Jupiter; my father could take us back to NY, and she’d fly home in a couple of days.
    .
    Everything was fine until we got on the plane, when we realized that my mother had my brother’s security blanket with her. He screamed, “I WANT MY RAG!!!” for the ENTIRE 4 hour flight. NOTHING would pacify him (and my father and I, and the stewardesses tried everything we could think of, including force feeding him a Screwdriver).
    .
    Five minutes before we landed, he finally fell asleep. As they were debarking, some passengers walking past us pointed and yelled, “THAT’S THE KID! THAT’S THE ROTTEN GØÐÐÃMN KID! THE ENTIRE FLIGHT!!!” We got lots of dirty looks from everyone. My father was so aggravated that, when my Aunt met us at the gate, he threw my brother at her like a football, and told her to get him out of his sight.

  8. I had to travel with a three-week-old, a two-year-old, and a three-year-old by myself. I had completely prepared (ha) and had toys and games for the toddlers, along with diapers, and everything else imaginable for a three-hour flight.

    The kids were actually pretty good for the airplane ride itself. It was the getting through the airport that was the problem. Neither would stay in a stroller, I had the littlest in a sling, but I’m not quite sure how two kids can go in five directions, but they do…

    And then the flight attendant decided to tell me that flying with a baby that young would cause her to brain to be squeezed like sausage through her soft spot. (WTH?) That’s not nightmare-inducing.

    With all of the toys and games I brought, the thing that the kids liked the most? Ice in a cup. Or ice on the tray. The only time anyone really cried was during landing, and that was from their ears hurting. It really was the navigating the airport issue that was the problem.

    1. You have my sympathies. When my boys were young my wife and I discovered quickly that two toddlers outnumber four adults.

      That flight attendant was guilty of a firing offense as far as I’m concerned — and I admire most flight attendants for the much-harder-than-most-people-realize work they do. But telling you that was completely unacceptable.

  9. My wife and I were once stuck on a train for a few hours between Innsbruck and Verona. Every seat and hallway was filled and we had nowhere to go, while our cabin mates, four German women of indeterminate age made it their mission to smoke every cigarette on Earth. This caused us to miss our connecting train in Verona to Florence and when we attempted (politely I might add)to get the deposit back from our sleeping car on the train we couldn’t get to through no fault of our own, the small Italian man at the train station actually looked me in the eye and said “I could help you. But I won’t.”

    Though we then decided to train hop our way to Florence which actually turned out to be a really grand time.

  10. I work with kids, I can take screaming…even for the duration of the flight. My worst experience was an overweight businessman on a fully book flight, who waited until the plane was in the air, then dropped his seat right into my lap. I couldn’t move, could barely breathe, couldn’t even comfortably pull out a book and read, because he was right there. And when I asked him politely to move his chair forward, he told me that the airlines wouldn’t make the chairs go back that far if it impeded the person behind the chair.

    I would have started kicking the back of HIS chair, if I’d had enough space to move my knees.

  11. On my first trip overseas, for 5 out of the 8 hours this child would not stop crying and the parents didn’t do a whole lot to try to quell the child; other than actually walking up and down the aisle with it a few times – thus having the entire section endure this “joy”.

    Between jet lag and other factors, it was not a good flight, shall we say. Afterward, when some of us from the flight were in the same line at the security checkpoint at the airport, one of the travelers called his wife and said “Honey, we’re not having kids…ever.”

  12. One Christmas we were going off to visit my sister in Lubbock, Texas (Ever been to Lubbock? Don’t. There’s nothing there but a University, a Buddy Holly Museum that isn’t allowed to be called a Buddy Holly Museum by order of his estate, and tumbleweeds). I can’t remember exactly what the situation was, but we ended up getting stranded in Newark, New Jersey on Christmas. As bad as Lubbock sometimes seems, Newark isn’t much better. It’s this little gray, industrial city where there isn’t much of anything besides one movie theater at the local mall to spend the time. The one who had it worst on that trip was my dad, who planned and organized the trip. Having to wheel and deal with Delta Airlines in order to somehow get us to Lubbock seemed like one of the most aggravating things ever.

  13. No screaming kids, but …

    Arrived on time at the airport to catch a short-haul flight to Toronto from where I’d then take the overseas route to visit fiancee-type person abroad.

    Except, my confirmed reservation was irrelevant. Air Canada (a.k.a. Air Crud) was overbooked. But that’s OK, I was told, there’s another flight in about an hour. Great, except it, too, was overbooked.

    Two more such ‘overbooked’ and the window to catch the connection in Toronto had pretty much slammed shut. Until, someone appraoched the staff and declared he didn’t actually need to be in Toronto until thmorning, so could he change flights and give his eat to someone who did need to be there this evening?

    I arrived with fifteen minutes left before the connecting flight – at the other end of the airport – was to take off. Nearly ruptured myself getting there, only to discover there had bene no rush because it was half an hour late arriving at the gate.

    Finally get on and then spend about four hours going nowhere as we’re told there’s a mechanical problem and they’re trying to gix it, first from inside, then getting a crew of mechanics to do it from outside. Eventually we’re told we have to go back to the terminal as the plane is being towed to a hangar.

    At about 03:00 we’re informed there are no spare crew or plane available (thank you deregulation) so we’ll be stuck there until sometime in the morning. Wound up sleeping on the terminal floor, trying to ignore the idiots nearby who were bellowing inbto their portable computer microphones, having conversations over the airport’s wireless network.

    Was woken up by the sound of the boarding announcement. Only … it had snowed during the night. A lot. So they finished clearing up the runway, but then we had to wait while they de-iced the plane. Another hour-and-a-half gone.

    All told, a $3300 trip saw its first day go down the tubes. I was not a happy camper.

    But it wasn’t over. Came time to return home, the Air Crud flight sat outside the gate, going nowhere fast. We were eventually informed that a secondary power generator had gone down and this meant the air conditioning was not working. Right. Stuck in a metal can with hundreds of other people, in a tropical country, in its summer, with no air conditioning. Oh, joy. Even the locals were complaining.

  14. Getting on a plane with a baby or toddler, the intensity of the hatred is palpable. And that’s just from the flight attendants. And I understood it – no one wants to be locked in with a screaming noise factory for hours. We were always lucky with our kids on planes as far as their behavior – never had a scene to put up with. We always bought them a seat, and brought on the car seat to secure them. On one over-crowded flight with our first daughter, the attendant’s eyes lit up when she saw the car seat, sure she had found the problem. She shot me daggers when I waved the ticket at her and asked if she wanted to double check it. She pointedly ignored us the whole flight.
    Our first daughter usually only gave us problems in the car. On a long drive from my sister’s one Christmas, she howled for an hour and a half all the way home. About a half-mile from home, she drifted off. “Oh no you don’t,” I muttered and shook the car seat(remembering the Cosby bit Peter referenced). I wanted to be able to say she literally cried all the way home. Now, I am in no way proud of picking on a one-year old like that. But it seemed desperately important at the time that she cry the whole drive – it was the only way I could keep my sanity at that point. 20 years later, I stand by my actions…

  15. Back in ’98, my father and I flew out to Maryland to spend Christmas with my sister and her family; our mother had passed away a few months prior and none of us felt like spending the holidays solo.
    .
    The trip out from Oakland was fine, the visit was a lot of fun (bar a few moments of sheer terror when my sister’s car – with me, her and both her sons on board – spun out on black ice across four lanes of freeway traffic; no hits, no injuries, no damage, and I still consider that the early Christmas present of a lifetime. Literally.)
    .
    The trip back, three days before New Year’s Eve, however…
    .
    Dad had gotten tickets with the now-gone America West Airlines via some discount website. Not too much of a problem, except our seats weren’t together. I got the one with the annoying kid kicking it from behind. Dad got the one with the garrulous drunk sitting next to him. (To make things even more fun, AW gave out free drinks to the passengers on transcontinental flights at the time; the guy next to Dad got on the plane half loaded to begin with and proceeded to get even drunker. He finally went to sleep about two hours before we landed.)
    .
    AW’s hub for the flight was Las Vegas, and it was a redeye flight landing for transfer at about 11 pm. When we touched down, we were informed that EVERY airport in the Bay Area that AW served was socked in with heavy fog. All connecting flights cancelled, see the ticket agent to make arrangements.
    .
    We were the second or third of four AW flights routing through Vegas for the Bay Area in the space of an hour, all of them full. The airline had ONE agent at the desk to deal with 300-400 stranded passengers – and the only thing the agent could say was, “Find someplace to stay and check with us tomorrow. We’re sending all baggage to our main hub in Phoenix. And since it’s a weather delay, we’re not going to refund your ticket or pay for lodging while you wait. NEXT!”
    .
    Find someplace to stay. In Las Vegas right before New Year’s. Yeah. Not to mention that I had to be back to work in Oakland in about 30 hours and it was now after midnight. By sheer chance I spotted a cart with some of the luggage from our flight, including my suitcase and Dad’s computer/briefcase; I managed to snag those, but finding Dad’s suitcase (even if it was on that cart) would have required decking the baggage handler (which I almost had to do to get the bags I did.)
    .
    We managed to get out into the main lobby and try to plan something. (For those who have never been unlucky enough to fly via McCarran/Las Vegas, the airport was designed very much like a casino; you can’t see outside, you can’t see around the next hallway and everything is laid out to herd you into the slot machine areas.) Basically, our only option was to rent a car – probably with a stiff penalty for turning it back in at a different, out-of-state location – and drive from Vegas to Oakland. Being after midnight, none of the car rental desks in the lobby were open; the few with direct lines to their off-airport offices either weren’t answering the phone or had no cars left. Borrowed Dad’s cell phone (thank god for gadget-freak engineers; this was 1998, remember) and got the national reservation desk for one of the smaller companies. They had cars. I made a reservation and we fought our way back to the rental-shuttle area, just managing to catch the hourly shuttle to the rental office…
    .
    …where the lady at the desk said she had no cars. More precisely, as it turned out, she had no cars that were allowed to leave the state. She finally dug up one SUV of questionable status, and was kind enough not to dig too deeply into whether it was legal for interstate travel or not. We loaded up. There was a soda machine at the pickup area; between the flight, the air-conditioning in the airport and the desert, Dad and I were both gasping. Fed it a dollar and punched the button. Nothing. Punched all the buttons; nothing. Put in another dollar, same thing. I turned to Dad and quoted the immortal words of Captain Kirk: “Let’s get the hëll out of here.”
    .
    We were somewhere outside of Barstow when the drugs…no, wait. Wrong strange and terrible saga. We made it to Barstow just fine, got breakfast and swapped out driving. There was occasionally an odd burning smell along the highway, most likely from the large number of semis that make up most of the traffic on I-5.
    .
    Or so we thought until we stopped for lunch. I walked to the back of the SUV to get a pack of cigarettes out of my bag, and noticed the smell again as I got towards the rear. And then noticed the coating of motor oil all over the rear hatch and window.
    .
    Called the rental company’s national number again. They could get a replacement car out in about four hours. I pointed out that we were a block away from a repair shop, and asked if we could at least get the beast looked at; they agreed. As I guessed, we’d taken a rock through the oil filter. The shop had it replaced and cleaned up by the time Dad and I finished lunch. Back on the road for Oakland.
    .
    We got into town just in time for rush hour, stopped briefly to grab some takeout barbecue for dinner and headed for home. I lived on the ground floor of a two-story that had been converted to flats; my upstairs neighbor (a co-worker) had been minding the cats while I was gone, as my roommate was also off visiting family for the holidays. One annoying thing about the building was that the landlord had never bothered re-keying any lock that was added or replaced; as I didn’t want to haul around eight keys on the trip, I’d taken spares of the two for the street door and the deadbolt on my door, the only two I normally used.
    .
    The neighbor had slightly different habits, apparently, and had locked the doorknob instead of the deadbolt. So Dad and I sat on the front steps for an hour munching our barbecued ribs, waiting for her to come home from work (with one of the cats watching us from the kitchen window wondering loudly why we weren’t inside paying attention to him and of course sharing the ribs.)
    .
    When I wrote the airline about their singularly rotten strategy for dealing with delayed flights (Dad’s luggage finally showed up in Oakland two days later), I got a form letter and two $20 vouchers for my next flight on America West. I sent them back in halves, with a note that simply said “You think there’s going to BE a next flight?!”

  16. I don’t know if this happens in the US too, but here in Brazil, it seems like whenever I want a quiet bus ride to read a novel, someone close by will be listening to the radio, and not the kind with headphones.
    .
    I don’t like children, but my hatred for people who listen to their music too loud knows no bounds. Perhaps my hatred is fueled by the trauma of a noisy brother that loved electronic music and two sucessive neighbours that listened to ear-splitting music the whole weekend and most nights (thank God they moved!)
    .
    Kids at least can’t control themselves. But my blood boils when I think of people who want to turn their homes and everyplace they go into a disco. And, obviously, if you tell them they’re being a bother, they will argue with you. It’s useless to argue, because if they were mindful of other people, they wouldn’t do it in the first place.
    .
    The only kind of genocide I’d support is a campaign to murder all people who listen to their music really loud.

    1. I take a lot of jitneys, or dollar vans when I travel to and from Manhattan or up and down Bergenline Avenue, in my home county, and what irritates me is when the driver puts music on. It’s bad enough that they figure they have to provide music for everyone in this age of personal iPods and iPhones (I have the latter), as if people can’t decide for themselves as individuals what to listen to, but invariably, it’s Spanish music, which I do not care for in the least.

    2. One of my neighbors listens to music in his car so loudly that when he passes my house, the windows rattle.
      .
      When I first moved in here back in 2002, I excused him. I assumed he was a teenager and remembered that I did the same when I was in my late teens / early 20s.
      .
      Now, nearly ten years later, I secretly wish for bad things to happen to his car.
      .
      Theno

      1. Dude, I can totally relate.
        .
        My noisy neighbour occupied the apartment immediately below. My building has nice isolation, but I could still feel my floor vibrating, his music was so loud you could easily hear it from the street (and the building is far away from the street).
        .
        To make matters tragicomical, I had moved from a noisier, lower class neighbourhood to a more upper class place, hoping I’d be free of noisy neighbours, and this dude, he came from the SAME NEIGHBOURHOOD I had escaped from. It was like he followed me there.

    3. My office is right next to a car repair place. One day the entire building I work in was vibrating from some guy who was over there for some work on his car, who had his windows down, blaring rap music. And not good rap music.
      .
      So I walked next door and complimented the guy on his choice of music, and on his speaker quality. He lit up and we chatted for a bit. Then I mentioned how the volume was impacting my ability to concentrate, and he quite nicely apologized and turned it down.
      .
      Sometimes you do win 🙂

  17. My scenario actually happened after I’d landed. I hesitate to call it a ‘nightmare’, as everything turned out for the best, and I was only inconvenienced for a few hours but still, it was a bizarre experience.

    My sister and I had flown into Chicgo O’Hare airport from the UK for her pen pals wedding. We were travelling a few days ahead of the rest of the family in order to do a bit of sightseeing first, and as such we had travelled with packpacks rather than suitcases.

    I remember this was probably only a couple of years after 9-11, as passing through immigration was incredibly slow – so slow in fact, that the luggage carousel had been completely empited by the time we arrived. With no sign of our backpacks, we had to wander into the main terminal to try to find someone who might know where they would have been taken. Opening the door of to the terminal was like stepping into the heart of Calcutta market. I have no idea what the problem was, but as far as the eye could see Americans with loaded luggage trolleys were fighting for position at the airport desks, all waving papers and screaming. abandoning the desks I searched for any airport staff who might be able to help and not a single one spoke English.

    Eventually, after queuing – twice – and being sent the length of the airport – 3 times – we were led by someone who knew where the bags might be. He led us back to the very same Arrivals door, where several large bin liners sat. Our bags had been thrown away, dumped in the garbage.

    The thing that struck me most was this: Our bags had not being collected from the carousel thanks to extended immigration procedures, but where did these potentially ‘suspect parcels’ end up? Sitting in a pile of rubbish for several hours in the very Heart of O’Hare airport. The mind boggles.

  18. Worst flight I ever took was in 1989, TWA from JFK to Israel. It was supposed to leave at 5pm; everyone was on board, the doors were locked, and we were ready to go. After an hour of waiting (still parked at the gate!) they announced there was some mechanical problem, and they were getting someone to fix it.
    .
    Ten hours later (seriously!!! It was 3am!!!) we finally pulled away from the gate. It was the first flight I’d ever taken where both meals were served, and both movies were played, while we were still on the ground. They wouldn’t let anyone off the plane during the wait, either (and we still had a 10+ hour flight in front of us). They refused to unlock the door and let us back into the terminal to stretch or anything. Just an awful experience.

    1. I wish I could believe it was a one-time thing but, no.

      Couple of years back a flight out of Cuba was detoured from Montreal to Ottawa due to snow. Passengers wound up spending over 12 hours just off a gate, stuck in the plane with no food, water, or, early on, working toilets. Cubana airline had no service contract with that particular airport and no one wanted to take responsibility for the passengers. Yes, it caused quite a bit of a row.

  19. I once puked on a guy’s shoes on a Greyhound – this was when smoking (cigarettes only) was allowed in the last ten seats.
    .
    This guy was sitting about the middle of the bus … and smoking a cigar. I asked him to quit. He sneered at me.
    .
    I asked the driver to do something. He told me that he didn’t want any hassle.
    .
    I went back to my seat. He sneered at me again.
    .
    I held on as long as i could.
    .
    And, as i said, i puked on his shoes.
    .
    Unfortunately, he must have seen that i was about to.
    .
    I was aiming for his lap.
    .
    (Something not too dissimilar occurs in my brother’s collaboration with Eric Flint, Crown of Slaves. I know i’ve told the story when Dave was around. I never thought of that before…)

  20. I am the kind of person that can sleep through a military parade with marching band, so I’ve never had any trouble with noises during flights. I do take notice of irritating children who kick my seat but I’ve never hesitated to tell the parents or even argue when they adopt the “it’s just how kids are” defence, wich is 90% in Spain. But I do have stories…
    .
    When I was 17 I spent two weeks in the Dominican Republic, visiting some friends from a previous journey. I traveled the country north-to-south and then back, staying at friend’s houses but basically on my own (my parents believed it was kind of an organized activity because I was schedduled to attend a congress sometime during my stay). When it was time to go back to Spain, I had little money in me plus a return ticket on a charter flight…that departed from a small airport on the other corner of the country.
    .
    Since I didnt even had enough for a bus, I got into a toyota minivan the locals used. Four hours in a cramped space with my luggage on my knees blocking my view. Three hours rubbing shoulders with a dominican old lady and a big haitian while hugging the rigid samsonite and trying to sleep. The minivan packed above its limits, flying along the road of a country that, at least back then, didnt issue any kind of permit to handle motor vehicles.
    .
    When I arrived to the airport I found that due to the end of the 92 olympics, spanish airspace was too busy and our charter flight had been delayed. The Airport was actually a huge roofed space with a shop, a bar and some offices underneath… that closed for the night. I was supposed to wait for an indefinite amount of time on a semi-deserted open space, with nothing to eat or drink.
    .
    The airline office was closed, but all the passengers had booked a full package with a tour operator. All passengers except me, that is. The tour operator was taking them to a hotel resort so I wasnt even going to have any companionship during the wait. So… I joined them. The whole thing was such a mess that since I looked and sounded spaniard I got into the bus and no one asked. At the resort I waited until everyone was given a room key and restaurant vouchers at the desk and said “I’m with them too”. I guess they didnt contemplate a spanish teen beign there on their own so they gave me a room key and two meal vouchers and asked no questions. I got a twin bed room with satellite tv, a shower and 12 hrs for free. 12 hrs later I got into the bus again and no one looked at me twice. Only when we arrived back at the airport a lady from the operator asked me who I was. I told her I though the bus was for all ticket carriers, not just the tour ones and I guess she found it less complicated to play along than to make a trouble out of it.
    .
    Then there is this time that my train stopped on a mountain pass north of Madrid because of the snow. The lady sitting next to me had been writing on a small notebook the whole trip and mumbling to herself, mostly religious paranoid stuff. After one hour not moving, the lady got really nervous and started to mumble furiously about how everyone was going to hëll and how people had lost its way because of divorce and abortion. The train started to move after some more time and we got to our destination some three hours late, but I didnt manage to sleep or concentrate on my book with that nut job sitting next to me.

  21. Worst flight I ever had was a redeye where the call buttons dinged constantly. Every time I fell asleep in the least, there was a ding. Babies I can forgive. They are just babies. But the combination of needy passengers and bad design was enough to drive me nuts.

    Ever since, when I am on a redeye, I use sound blockers or headphones and music.

  22. A little over six years ago, we’d been east for a week house-hunting (for all three of us) and job-hunting (for me). It was a surprisingly successful week — we went back to California with both a house and a job in hand — but on the flight back Katherine (age eight months at the time) had finally had enough and got pretty fussy mid-flight.
    .
    Earlier in the flight we’d met someone across the aisle from us who really like Katherine. Really, REALLY liked Katherine. Add in the fact that she was apparently 2-3 sheets to the wind already, and we were a little bit wary.
    .
    About halfway through the flight, she’s hovering over us like a buzzard trying to play w/ Katherine, and someone tries to get past her on his way back from the restroom. he says, “Excuse me,” and she goes absolutely bûgfûçk nuts on him. “What the hëll is your problem?” was the start of it, and it went on from there. He was very calm (which probably made her even more upset), and also pointed out that she was clearly both drunk and irrational. One of the attendants came over and spoke with her, but left it at that.
    .
    Maybe half an hour after THAT, Katherine starts fussing up quite a bit. Our neighbor says, “You better keep that baby quiet, or the guy up there might kill it. He doesn’t like noise.”
    .
    That was enough to set me off; I was about to get up to get in her face something fierce. Before that happened, though, the other guy got up and immediately called for the attendant back. He explained the situation, and our neighbor was taken to the back of the plane to sit w/ the attendants for the remainder of the flight.
    .
    When we landed, nobody got off the plane until cops came on to the plane and took her away. After we got off the plane they took a statement from us, and that was it so far as we knew.
    .
    Except … when we got off the jetway and into the airport proper, we passed the woman again talking to the cops. The only thing we heard was, “but I only had one drink before I got on the plane!” I figure that if your argument was that you were capable of that behavior *sober*, that’s probably not helping your case…
    .
    Anyway, fun times.
    .
    TWL

    1. Yikes. Do they ever administer a sobriety test to passengers prior to boarding?

  23. Won’t do much for the seat kicking, but with the amount you travel Peter I strongly recommend investing in a pair of Bose QC2 headphones (the full padded over the ear style.) I balked at the cost until one day during a full out screaming baby fit similar to yours, the gentleman sitting next to me let me try his for 10 mins or so when he went to the bathroom. I almost refused to give them back. With a decent bit of music on (I prefer Kitaro or Tangerine Dream for sleep), the baby’s earthshattering yells were dropped to the level of quiet conversation, easily ignorable.

    I’m now on my second set, by way of wearing them out, annd like that gentlemen I think I have now sold about 20 paird via demos…

    Best travel investment I have ever made, followed up by my iPad.

    1. (I prefer Kitaro or Tangerine Dream for sleep)>/i>
      .
      If things are really chaotic try some Yoko Ono or Diamanda Galás, you’ll appreciate the way the screaming baby achieves a relative tonal harmony.

  24. I have a travel horror story. Back when I was eight I was on the last leg of a flight from CA to WV.
    .
    As the flight began, I felt a pressure in my head. I popped my ears, yawned, chewed gum, did everything I normally do and everything attendants and other passengers suggest I do, but the pressure just got stronger and stronger the longer the flight lasted.
    .
    Eventually, the pain got so intense that I became a screaming child, except one old enough that other passengers didn’t excuse quite so readily. Especially with my little sister, less than a year old, quietly enjoying the trip. At the time, I honestly felt like my head was going to explode.
    .
    After that, we didn’t fly again. Our every-other-year vacations to my grandparents in CA were taken via Amtrak. The incident happened in 1979. The next time I flew was in 1997.
    .
    The only time after ’97 when I’ve flown was 2006. I had a reverse-horror story. I was flying Southwest, who has a rather unique boarding system. People are A, B, or C passengers and board in that order with no assigned seats. I was flying cheaply as a C and, due to the first leg of the flight being late was near the middle of the third queue. A lady with an A ticket arrived while I was boarding and was told she had to go to the very back. I told her she could cut line ahead of me.
    .
    She and I sat together and talked. She flirted with me. I flirted with her. And, long story short, we ended up making out for what was probably most of the flight. As we disembarked, the crew told us to enjoy our stay in Sacremento, clearly assuming we were a couple travelling together.
    .
    My friends told me that I was an idiot for not giving her my address, email, and/or phone number.
    .
    Theno

    1. Thenodrin, I had a similar thing happen to me. I’ve always had problems with my ears, though — daily trips to NYC for work, under the East River, were enough to pop my ears significantly. Anyway, I was on a flight to the UK, and as we ascended, the pressure and pain in my ears built. And continued to build. And built and built until I felt I couldn’t stand it anymore. Being a grownup, turning into a shrieking child wasn’t really an option (at least, my self-esteem wouldn’t allow it). So I jammed a pillow against my head and prayed to every god I could think of, and eventually…after one last huge searing, knife-like pain…it stopped. The flight continued without incident, and eventually we arrived at Heathrow.

      My husband and I got off the plane, went through customs, got our car, and headed off for Glastonbury, where we were spending a little over a week (followed by a week in Scotland). Just outside of Reading we had some trouble with directions, and so stopped at a tea shop to ask for help. I always drive in the UK, since I seem to be able to switch seamlessly from driving on the right to driving on the left, so I sat in the car behind the wheel while my husband went in to inquire about directions. While waiting for him, I sat there, idly scratching the ear that had caused me so much trouble on the flight. When I pulled my hand away from my head and happened to glance down at it — and saw BLOOD! — I had a good and proper freak out, right there in the car park. I was SURE my brain had exploded mid-flight, and no amount of convincing would get me to believe otherwise.

      Turned out to be a burst eardrum, and thanks to the fact that I have titanium body parts, I always carry a prescription of antibiotics with me overseas (don’t ask; if you have metal body parts, you already know about this, and if you don’t, you don’t care). So after a call to my US doctor, a week of antibiotics, and two weeks of pressing cups of hot coffee to my ear (pictures exist to prove I did this all over Great Britain!), my ear was actually healed enough that I could get back on a plane to return home.

      The moral of the story is that some people should ALWAYS take extremely strong decongestant about an hour before takeoff and landing.

      Still, I think having a small child wailing continuously and kicking your seat back throughout a long flight would be worse!

  25. Wow. Makes me glad I’m a “stay at home” kinda guy.
    |
    Never had any travel horror stories (the vacations themselves, however… NEVER had a good one in my life.)
    |
    When I was a little kid, my uncle forced me onto a Star Wars roller coaster at Disney in Cali. I was so terrified that I hid my head in my mother’s purse the entire time. I’ve hated Disney, Star Wars, amusement parks, heights, AND my Uncle ever since.
    |
    Several years later, I was forced to spend the summer in Texas with my father. The entire time I was there, I only wanted to turn around and go home. Literally. I didn’t even trust the water because he lives on the border and I’d heard reports of people getting sick from it. Pure hëll.
    |
    Spent one Christmas visiting my then long-distance girlfriend (it’s been so long I can’t even remember the state). I soon discovered that this was a mistake, as her parents were bible-thumping lunatics who hated anyone who wasn’t Christian (they didn’t know their daughter was a Wiccian, and I was Jewish-born and more or less athiest) and thought that they’d once fought the Devil. They even went so far as to try and convert me the entire time I was there (even trying to force a bible on me… I quietly left it behind). Suffice to say, going home was an absolute joy.
    |
    …Oh god, I’m suddenly dreading next year when I plan to attend PowerMorphicon 3…

  26. They need to invent those suspended animation chambers from sci-fi movies for children on airplanes.
    On second thought, screw the kids, make them for those of us who need the rest.

  27. Not a travel horror story but the reason I avoid American Airlines:

    On a flight to a conference, I picked up my checked luggage and found that the corner of my hardback suitcase had been smashed in. The thing was taped up. I opened it, satisfied myself that the only thing missing or damaged was a pair of socks, and casually asked the attendant what happened.

    The attendant didn’t know. There was no note. It could have been damaged and taped up by elves.

    So I asked about getting it replaced. Would I get a certificate good for buying luggage or would I send them a bill?

    No. First I had to take the thing to an approved luggage repair shop. Then, if the shop couldn’t do anything, I had to tell the airline what kind of luggage it was replacing and they’d send me the cheapest equivalent.

    Did I like the bag I got? Do I check bags or fly American again?

  28. Ok, not as bad as PAD’s, but ‘interesting’ none the less…

    Back in the ’70s, my newly married wife and I decided to fly out to Palm Springs from Tennessee for Christmas during Christmas break. We planned it months in advance, went to a travel agent and bought the tickets in August, and thought we were all set.

    In September, the travel agent called, and said that the flights had changed, and we would be on different flights into PS. No problem. In October, we learned that the flights had changed again, and we could no longer get into PS, so we changed the flights to go to Ontario. My sister could drive out and pick us up. In November, we learn the flights have changed AGAIN! We end up flying into LAX, and will take a puddle jumper out to Ontario…

    December comes around and we get on our flight. I am enjoying looking out the window, and I notice that we are circling, and that the town down below is Palm Springs! Ask the attendant and she tells us that LAX is socked in with fog. After a little while, we change course, and start circling Ontario! Our flight is about an hour late at this point…

    I can only assume that the pilot had a hot date in LAX that night, because we then set course for LA. We circle for another half hour. The guy behind us is four sheets to the wind, and starts talking about opening up the window and going for a walk on the wing. Everyone is cranky, and then we start going down. And going down… and going down…

    I am looking out the window, and I don’t see anything but white. We keep going down, and down, and down…

    Suddenly I see runway lights and we touch down. There couldn’t have been more than 25 feet of visibility.

    So, here we are at LAX, over an hour late. We get off the plane, and change terminals, and head over to the puddle jumper terminal. We are told that only FOUR flights have landed at LAX all night, and none have taken off. The puddle jumper has rented a bus to take us to Ontario. We go over to the luggage area to ask about our luggage, and when we turn around, the terminal is suddenly very, very quiet… the bus just left! A couple of hours later, my sister drives all the way into LAX and picks us up.

    As for our luggage? We get to have an entire week in Palm springs with no clothes. We go into the store, and buy a single outfit each, which we submit to the airlines for reimbursement, but we don’t see our luggage until the day before we are supposed to go home! 🙁

    The good news? Remember that we booked through a travel agent? They were a GOOD travel agent. On our behalf, they complained to the airline, the puddle jumper, the president of the airline, the president of the puddle jumper, and I don’t know who else. Over the next year, they call us in every few months, and give us another refund check. By the time they were finished, we pretty much flew for free. As students living on minimum wage jobs, those check were wonderful!

    Charlie

  29. My brother, and nephew are hyper-kinetic. It’s hormonal. In cases like these kids, Dramamine, Ritalin, etc, do not work. It works the opposite, hypes them up. What does work…get ready….COFFEE!! I kid you not. My mom (a nurse) would give it to my brother, and made it a special treat only HE got – the rest of us kids weren’t allowed. This of course, got him to drink it. Mellowed him out. Relaxed him. Turns out, caffeine reacts differently in hyper-kinetics, it acts like a downer, not an upper. That mom should have given her kid a cup of coffee with some sugar, cream, maybe even a marshmallow (like my mom). Probaby would have knocked him right out.

  30. Let’s see… My last experiences with Greyhound were not so good. Sure, there was nothing they could do about the highway closure that forced them into a detour that got us to Olds around the time we were supposed to reach Red Deer. Ordinarily, I could have slept the whole way, but there was just something to the irregular stop and start driving pattern (for about an hour, I could have walked faster, even on that stormy evening, due to the size of the traffic jam created) that wouldn’t let me. Fortunately, I’d brought reading material. Unfortunately, the driver had disabled the lights and would not turn them on until we reached Olds, and my flashlight was in my suitcase, not my carry-on. Aggravating, but not so bad.
    .
    The trip back seated me next to a guy who kept telling me what his demons wanted him to do. Okay, that didn’t help with my attempts to sleep, but I endured. Two weeks later, I had to make the same round trip to visit my brother. That went fine on the way up, thankfully, but I didn’t buy a return ticket. My brother’s boyfriend, who’d worked at Greyhound at the time, was going to arrange for it…only that didn’t work out, what with them phasing out all service to Lacombe. No big deal; I’d be able to pick one up in Red Deer, and…
    .
    The Red Deer terminal was closed. It didn’t matter that the posted hours said it was open until 10 PM; at 7, the staff had locked the doors and left the building. I was told arrangements could be made with the driver, so there was that at least.
    .
    And then, on a night where wind chill lured Farenheit into Celsius’ neighbourhood, the bus didn’t show up for two and a half hours…two minutes ahead of the next bus to Calgary. My brother had to abandon me there for only half an hour of that before returning to wait until a bus finally arrived; people who’d been waiting since six had it worse. I felt especially bad for the people who wound up missing their last connection of the night to Lethbridge or points in the U.S. After that, I’ve made a point of sticking with the Red Arrow.
    .
    As for air travel, not too bad. I did not enjoy being transferred to a Hercules on an August flight from Whitehorse to Edmonton, mainly because no one had bothered to warn me that I was not going to be seated in a heated environment for the next few hours. Eh, I lived. My experience a few years earlier in trying to reach St. John’s from a cadet camp in Borden was worse. Movements bussed us out of Borden around two in the afternoon, but no arrangements had been made to feed us in Trenton four hours later. All we could afford came from pooling the pocket change we had for vending machine candy bars at the airportt…because there was no place to cash the $160 cheques we were given for completing our courses.
    .
    The flight from Trenton to Greenwood wasn’t so bad, despite the fact that there was neither meal nor snack served on that flight despite the distance involved. We stopped in Halifax, where the kids going to New Brunswick were put up in a hotel for the night to wait for a connection the next day, then flew into Greenwood to catch our connecting flight–which we watched leave without us as we waited for our luggage to be unloaded.
    .
    We waited in the Greenwood terminal until about eleven in the morning (after a thankful stop for breakfast at the mess hall, when we were beyond caring what colour the scrambled eggs were), when Movements announced that they’d found us seats–on a plane leaving Halifax. The two hour van ride wouldn’t have been so bad if smoking had been banned on military vehicles at that point…or if opening a window had been an option. For bonus points, we got to the terminal just as the kids from New Brunswick returned from their hotel to catch their last flight. Judging by the horrified looks they gave us, the Newfoundland contingent must have been an awful sight by then.
    .
    But wait, there’s more! When I was in my late twenties, I went to visit my mother, the first time I’d seen her in about twenty-five years. Got to the airport to learn that the flight had been cancelled, but Canadian Airlines was willing to transfer me to either a flight leaving ninety minutes later–or an Air Canada flight going out in just another ten minutes. Since my mother had no idea what I looked like, I figured I’d best catch the flight leaving as soon as possible afterward–only to discover when I went to check in for that that it had been overbooked.
    .
    Dummy that I was, I’d packed my mother’s phone number in my checked luggage, and was unable to tell her that I’d be arriving three hours later than originally planned–and on a different carrier’s plane. Well, I figured, I’d cope. It was just a matter of getting her phone number out of luggage when I arrived, and calling her then, right?
    .
    Only…my luggage wasn’t unloaded with the rest. So here I am in Vancouver, where I know no one else, without an address or phone number (not found in phone book either). I waited for an hour with no idea what to do next, when I heard someone walking by say to the guy next to her, “And I can’t even tell you what he looks like because I haven’t even seen him in twenty-five years!”
    .
    My first words in person to my mother were, “I know the feeling.”
    .
    Amusingly, when I got into the line to report my lost luggage, I looked down to see it was right beside me, to the annoyance of the dozen people in front of me. It turned out that it had arrived on the earlier Air Canada flight.
    .
    My only other airline horror story was the time I flew from Dallas-Fort Worth to Seattle, but that was because my ex-wife-to-be would not let go of my hand the entire trip. Normally, that would be sweet, but she was enduring this trip with an agonizing sinus condition was determined to share that through a bone-crushing grip the whole way. My other horror story with her involved her visit to national parks with her parents, as well her mother’s best friend and her husband–their pastor. What should have been a lovely vacation because an exhausting nightmare because they’d all allowed the pastor to browbeat them all into changing their itinerary from one that would work their way from one site to the next to one that had them commuting daily from Banff to Jasper and back again, leaving them very little time to do anything, really. Throw in the fact that they had to make rest stops every half an hour for the man who’d insisted on this course. Did. Not. Help.
    .
    Other than that, every nightmare involved car rides with my family. Four hours of holding a car seat belt together while my two year old brother attacked my hand. The hours stuck in the back seat at campgrounds because my father could not park a trailer and wouldn’t let any of us out of the car until he’d done so, fearing we might get hit playing nearby–when the last few hours of travel without air conditioning in summer meant we wanted to be nowhere near that car and its skin-burning seats. Heat exhaustion from waiting an hour in a ferry’s parking hold. Four hours on a Christmas visit to my grandparents, sharing the backseat with an overweight beagle that wasn’t not secured in a kennel and far too overenthusiastic about condensation on the windows. (Let’s just say I spent that entire trip wishing I’d had a protection cup.)
    .
    …I’d forgotten why I dread travelling. Thankfully, I’m pretty good at sleeping through the screams of children.

  31. Worst flight (aside from the one when we landed in wind and went off the edge of the runway) was from NY to Orlando. A mother was seated next to me holding her child (year to year and a half I guess, she couldn’t speak yet) and to keep her quiet rather than use a pacifier or something she fed her bottle after bottle (I think three) the entire three hour flight. As we were landing I was yelled at by the flight attendant for jumping up out of my seat as the kid proceeded to throw up three hours worth of formula on me.

  32. Wow. All this just makes me even more super-grateful that my daughter is such a good traveler. She took her first flight at 10 PM without getting dinner beforehand (her mom had to go straight from work to daycare to the airport to make the flight, due to an unexpected North Carolina blizzard) and had to sit through a de-icing delay, and she still behaved better than the kid you had to sit in front of, PAD. My sincere condolences.

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