Imagine if you will: a sick, sleep-deprived man. Mr. Todd Kreisman, forty-one, husband, father, and chronic neck pain sufferer. Mr. Kreisman is just returning home from Christmas with his family, and is therefore already in a harried, deranged state. Just nine days earlier, he boarded a flight out of Los Angeles, on an evening not dissimilar to this one, on an airliner very much like the one in which Mr. Kreisman is about to be flown home. Tonight, he's traveling all the way to his appointed destination which, contrary to Mr. Kreisman's plan, happens to be in the darkest corner of the Twilight Zone.
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| I may never sleep again |
This year, my wife and I flew with our son fourteen times. Once again, for those in the back: FOURTEEN. That's five different trips, there and back, sometimes with layovers. Fourteen flights we needed to survive, and somehow we did. But it was close.
The first several flights weren't too bad. Oliver was pretty little (I mean, relatively speaking, he's still pretty little, but back then he was especially petite), and he may have done some occasional bawling, but for the most part he slept, and he also wasn't yet walking, or climbing, or engaging in full-on body contortion. The next handful of flights got tougher. He was beginning to get antsy. He learned how to grab the safety card out of the seat pocket in front of us, and fling it into the row behind us. His flailing faculties improved. He had nearly perfected his full-throated scream, which sounds like someone is being murdered with an apple corer. The process of air travel was growing more challenging, but we still felt we had things more or less under control. The last few flights, including the one from LA to Chicago on December 19th, felt basically like the first 27 minutes of
Saving Private Ryan. We took a deep breath before boarding, prepared ourselves for battle, and marched valiantly down the jet bridge, not sure if we'd ever see our friends and family again. And yet, even those flights we survived.
Then came the flight from Chicago back to LA on December 28th.
O that we might reverse time. We could go back and rip up our boarding passes. Erin could call off of work for another four days, and we could rent a car, driving our shrieking son cross country. It still would have been a nightmare, but at least it would have been
our nightmare alone. And he would have been secured in place by some sort of harness.
To give you a little background, I was exceptionally ill. I'd been at the ER just 48 hours earlier. I had blacked out, thrown up, and peed myself (while blacked out, it should be noted). And, for the two days leading up to this flight, I had been a strong financial supporter of the Imodium brand line of products. Even if we hadn't had a toddler, I would have been dreading the flight. But, as it was, I would need to stave off enemies on multiple fronts. And one of those enemies would be head-butting me in my upset stomach.
It was a late flight; more foolish parents than we might have expected him to sleep a bit on the plane. Instead, he was overtired, and apparently needed to behave like a crazed psychopath just to keep himself awake. The first exciting thing he found was that he could turn the latch on the tray table, let the table drop, and then slam it back into place, not at all bothering the person sitting there, who had unknowingly paid upwards of $500 to be physically pummeled for four hours. We told him, of course, that he couldn't do that, but he no speak English so good, so our words had no effect. We would hold him tightly, pinning his arms around his body, but being the resourceful lad he is, he would merely resort to using his feet to bother those sitting in front of us.
We tried to distract him with some toys, but on an airplane, toys transform into projectiles. They are not something to be played with, but rather something to be launched in the general direction of the drink cart. There were screens in the backs of the seats on this flight, for which we were initially grateful, but they did not meet our son's standards. For one thing, their selection, despite featuring hundreds of titles, did not sufficiently please him. You could not pull up Baby Shark, or the Tiki Room song, or the Hot Chocolate song from
Polar Express, or the Mahna Mahna Muppets song. Which are literally the only four things he likes to listen to, in case you were thinking of making him a mix tape. Even when we found something else he sorta liked, like an episode of
Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, we didn't find relief for long. Because he saw us touching the screen with our fingers, he wanted to join in the fun. So he would poke and slap at the screen until he paused the show, or fast-forwarded it to the end, or backed out of it altogether and somehow wound up playing
Hobbs & Shaw. Then he would scream and flail, because the TV wasn't doing what he wanted it to do (which was to play Baby Shark, most likely), and Erin and I would share a glance and then weep.
And then the plane took off.
And he took a massive dump.
It wasn't
that he dropped an enormous deuce. Everybody poops—I read that in a book once. It was the ferocity of the stench. And the timing. The seat belt light was on, so we (Erin) couldn't get up to change his diaper. Then the cart came through, so there was no getting to the bathroom for another half hour. Then there was turbulence—seat belt light again. All told, over an hour passed before we had the opportunity to rid ourselves of the malodor that had been plaguing everyone within sniffing distance of seats 24A-and-B.
Finally, it was time for the Toddler Olympics. The Opening Ceremonies consisted of him trying to remove all of his clothing. A shoe would smack one of us in the forehead; a sock would land on one of our shoulders. The rest of it he had difficulty removing from his body, but he sure as hell tried. The first official event was Stickering, which consisted of Oliver screaming until we would hand him the sticker he wanted, then A) sticking it on our faces, B) folding it in half and screaming because it had lost its sticking properties, or C) putting it in his mouth and scaring us half to death until we could dig it out of his throat. The next event was Deep Seat Diving, wherein he would alternate diving feet-first and head-first into the gap between our row and the row in front of us, then sometimes cartwheeling in either direction to reverse position. While down there, he would sometimes emerge with a wet Cheerio, or a sock, or a miniature Tito's Vodka bottle. The final event was the Very Modern Pentathlon, which included Face Slapping, Rear Row Screeching, General Freak-Out, Maniacal Laughing, and Cracker Discus. He won gold in all of the disciplines.
Later, I stood in the aisle to give him some time in my seat, which I hoped might calm him down. Instead, he did some kind of advanced tumbling move, and wound up falling off the seat, landing fairly heavily to the ground. He started crying immediately, and while it would have normally been our first impulse to reach for him immediately and comfort him, there was at first a brief moment during which Erin and I turned and looked each other in the eyes, perhaps flirting with the idea of leaving him there and letting him work it out. But our parental instincts, though delayed in this instance, eventually roared to life, and we retrieved our whimpering son from the floor.
There was more—oh so much more—but I'm still suffering so much PTSD from the experience that I'd rather skip it. The only positive thing I can take away from the experience is that my stomach hung in there for the entire flight. Praise be.
Oh, and he did finally fall asleep, bless his heart.
About five minutes to landing.
