If only every passenger on a plane could be this understanding.
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The last flight I got on, our plane was delayed almost two hours before take-off. In what felt like cruel and unusual punishment, the flight attendants had ushered us all on quickly and told us to buckle up — only for us to then go nowhere fast. And while I was totally fine to sit and read a book for once in my life, the 6-month-old baby behind me was not.
I felt horrible for the poor mother who was stuck in the middle seat with her inconsolable baby. She was doing that thing where she was trying to soothe the baby but was stressed to the max because she thought the whole plane hated her and her baby was just feeding off of her stress and screaming even more, and you know that if she could just be in her own bedroom with her own crib and her own blanket that baby would have been fine, but nope, she was trapped on a crowded plane.
The point is, we’ve all dealt with a crying baby on a plane, whether it’s our own or we’re trying not to notice someone else’s in hopes of not making the poor parent feel worse or we’re the ones being a big jerk about the noise.
But who we should all really be is the kind grandfather that one mother, who shared her story with Love What Matters, encountered on a recent trip.
While getting ready to visit her family 5,000 miles away during her husband’s deployment, the poor mother did what any of us do while flying with a baby or toddler: she tried to prepare for every possible scenario while knowing that deep down, it could all go terribly wrong in a second.
“I prepared well, relying on prior experience,” she wrote. “Crayons. Books. Games. Toys. Snacks. Her favorite blankie. I spent hours trying to find flights with perfectly-timed itineraries, hoping she may be able to nap on the plane.
Of course none of that mattered, and deep down, I knew it. We were going to be spending hours and hours on a loud, tightly-confined air plane. And of course fits of rage ensued. I had such anxiety about her airborne tantrums. Once before, I had had a very rude man tell me to ‘shut that child up before I do’ when my very tired infant would not stop crying. I choked back tears as I ignored his comment and continued to try to soothe my baby. It had traumatized me a bit and I vowed to never fly again after that.”
But thankfully for her and for womankind in general, her next encounter would not be so horrible. This time around, she ended up next to the kind of guy we should all aspire to be more like.
The man, who reassured the anxious mother that she was “doing a great job,” offered to switch seats with her, to keep the baby entertained with pictures of his grandkids on his iPad. He played games with her and distracted both mom and baby with conversation for the duration of the six-hour flight.
“He didn’t judge me,” the grateful mother said as she ended her story. “He didn’t grow irritated when the screams and crying started. He didn’t say something rude to me in a moment of irritability. He gracefully sacrificed his time and energy to help a distressed mother and child. He was understanding. He made our flight, not just bearable, but pleasant. I often think of him all these years later. It was the kindness of a stranger that got us through that day and I will always be thankful for him.”
And we can be thankful that people like him still exist in the world, along with hoping that the next time we take a flight, we get lucky enough to sit next to someone so cool.
Also, the iPad probably wouldn’t hurt, just throwing that out there to my next potential seat mate.
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This article originally appeared on Babble.
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Photo courtesy of author.
I won’t pretend to know the first thing about raising or comforting children.
But one of my sisters has three kids between the ages of 2 and 5. And she brings an Ipad for each one of them, pretty much wherever they go. Just sayin.