Baby on a Plane

The most irritating thing in the world might just be a crying baby on an aeroplane. There’s nothing at all you can do. You just have to sit and bear it. You can’t leave the room or hop off. Never in your life will you be so absolutely powerless. The drone of the engine drowns out the aimless chitter-chatter of the passengers but it is powerless against the high-pitched screams of an uncomfortable infant. As much as you want to scream back, or yell at the parent, you can’t. If you do say anything you are now the culprit: the heartless thug who yelled at a baby. Forget the fact you paid one thousand dollars to sit in an uncomfortable chair for eight hours staring at the back of another uncomfortable chair, you are now going to be audibly invaded with no control or say in the matter while the parent sits patiently waiting for the outburst to finish. They feel bad for their little angel, but don’t actually do anything to remedy the situation. And it’s not the baby’s fault. It’s just a baby. It doesn’t know where the fuck it is or why its ears feel funny. The parent, however, knows perfectly well that her very young offspring is prone to glass-shattering outbursts and knew it was more than likely that at high altitude in a confined space it would probably be worse than usual. But this doesn’t concern them. They don’t consider the other hundred people being inconvenienced and go on their holiday anyway, a holiday the child won’t ever remember and may as well have been spent splashing about in a blow-up pool in the backyard at home.

A crying baby is the one thing you can’t call a stewardess for. If your meals wrong, if you don’t know how to fill out your arrival card or if you want an extra pillow you just press a button and they’ll do anything within the realm of possibility to make the flight more bearable and comfortable for you. But ask them to put a muzzle on a crying infant or tell the parent to shut it up and they are as helpless as the rest of us. For all the rudeness, arrogance and disrespect they encounter every flight from passengers, with a manufactured smile and award-worthy tolerance, there is no procedure manual for a crying baby and its languid parent. The best they can offer is a gentle stroke of the head and a compassionate ‘aw, it’ll be okay, darling,’ before pushing the trolley away down the aisle.

A great anomaly of this Earth we all inhabit is that humans have dominated all species despite being so completely and utterly useless for the first few years of our life. Foals walk out of the womb. Reptiles and birds have to peck a hole in a shell and climb out. A human baby has to be carried everywhere, have food delivered directly to their mouth and be cleaned after defecating to prevent them lying permanently in their own shit. They shouldn’t be in an aeroplane.

As I write this another one has started up. A long, slobbery moan broken up by intermittent screeches that startle all around it. Catching a glimpse it isn’t even a baby. This kid could be two or three-years-old and the mother is next to him, reading a book and ignoring him, deciding that a crowded international flight is the best place to apply this new tough-love parenting technique. It’s clearly not working as he starts to increase the volume and kick the seat in front of him at the expense of the lady sitting in it. But you can’t expect much from a woman stupid and naïve enough to take her child of this age on a flight of this length.