on my flight from brisbane to singapore 3
weeks ago i wanted to punch a small child in the face and jab it with a horse
tranquiliser. too harsh? maybe a mini-horse tranquiliser...a shetland pony
tranqu perhaps. i’m terrible at judging the ages of people so i’m going to go
ahead and call the screaming offender a baby...maybe it was 1 year old...2
years old? i should call it a she really. let’s say she was 18 months old. i
didn’t like the kid. maybe she was teething, i’m told that hurts quite a bit.
or maybe she had an ear infection (this suggestion is courtesy of my older
sister who has thankfully provided my family tree with the grandchildren). i
prefer to simply think of the screamer as a brat...it makes it easier for me to
hate her screaming guts (and it makes my shetland pony tranqu fantasies seem
not so inappropriate...right?)
she didn’t scream for the entire 8 hour
flight. there were periods of quiet, although i can only imagine that these
occurred because her parents were packing some pony tranqu of their own. i looked forward to venturing out of my seat
to the toilet to escape the noise...which is disturbing to me. nobody should
enjoy going to the toilet on a plane. without fail there are indistinguishable
wet patches on the ground and they ask you to wipe out the basin after you’ve
washed your hands...this is weird and disgusting and i don’t understand it at
all.
towards the end of my flight i saw
something quite lovely happen. there was a family of four sitting in front of
the screamer. every time she worked up the energy for another bout of torture,
the mum and daughter in front of her would pick up a bunch of stuffed toys and
begin doing a puppet show. i’m not sure how they happened upon so many stuffed
monkeys...but i am glad for their strange obsession. sometimes the screamer
just kept screaming. sometimes she grabbed a fistful of monkeys and threw them
angrily to the ground. then sometimes the smiling, performing mother-daughter
combo had a breakthrough and the screamer would chuckle.
and so on and on it went. scream. puppets.
scream. stolen monkeys. scream. quiet chuckle. 3 second silence...bliss.
i loved that mother and daughter. so
gracious and kind as they busied themselves trying to make the flight more
peaceful for us all. unfortunately, they didn’t rub off on me...i pretty much
hated the baby til the bitter end. all i could do was sit back and smile and
wish to one day be a much kinder person.
step one: buy some monkeys.
I love you. Also, I recommend this website for monkey puppets: http://sockmonkeycompany.com/category/Classic-Sock-Monkeys/c1
ReplyDeletehaha...excellent, thankyou:-)
ReplyDeleteI have been reading you blog entries. Now I have read this one, it has confirmed my earlier suspicion that you have stolen my identity. Horse tranqulisers? Harsh? Na. Not at all.
ReplyDeleteI have been known to yell at a man on a long hall flight for snoring loudly. (It was dark, so I am hoping no-one knew it was me.) And I did it for the greater good of all.
I know what its like to have a screaming child, I introduced two into the world, but I had the good sense not to ever take them traveling with me on a plane.
I actually get a little stressed if there isn't a screaming child on a plane. It happens sometimes and I think the airlines should pipe screaming kids music on landings and take offs, just to reassure passengers that everything is normal.
i'm clearly terrible at blogging cause i only just saw this comment!! always good to know there are more people in the world like me. again, thanks so much for reading x
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