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Challenge: Traveling with Kids

I Won’t Apologize For Flying With Kids

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Last year, there was a popular story about a couple who, before boarding a flight with their infant twins, created and distributed goody bags to the other passengers.

Knowing the odds were high that their babies would make a ruckus, these parents got proactive and put together bags full of candy, ear-plugs, and even a little note in which they apologized for their kids' potentially-forthcoming commotion. It was a clever strategy, and it inspired copycats, like a blogger friend of mine whose courteous, empathetic wife recently employed a similar gambit.

It just so happens that my wife and I are hopping on a plane later today, along with our excitable toddler. Inspired by the ingenuity and foresight of the people mentioned above, I've created a goody bag of my own for our cabin-mates, to thank them for not getting too mad at me for flying with kids.

Let me know what you think!

Dad and Buried's "Pre-Flight Preemptive Apology for Flying with Kids" Goody Bag:

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Contents:

  • Drink Coupon: For one warm mug of SHUT THE HELL UP if you ever get the urge to complain about a two-year-old.
  • Compact Mirror: So you can take a good look at yourself and consider what kind of person gets pissed off at parents traveling with a toddler who's making their lives much more miserable than he's making yours.
  • Pill: It's either a sleeping pill or Ecstasy. Either way your mood will improve.
  • The World's Smallest Violin (not photographed): For you to play as you're being whisked through the air at astonishing speeds to someplace far away while watching TV and listening to music through headphones that block out any noise from the toddler a few rows back who has never intentionally annoyed anyone in his entire life. (Except his parents.)
  • E.T.: Unfortunately a DVD was too big to fit in a bag, but here's a few bucks so you can rent the movie when you land and try to remember what it was like to be a kid, you heartless asshole.
  • Heartfelt Note: In which I challenge you to a fight.

Unfortunately for the other passengers on our plane, I'm not quite as nice as the parents mentioned above. #SorryNotSorry.

More power to them, though, for taking the time between packing every children's toy and DVD and snack - and everything else they needed to survive a flight with their kids - to package up a bunch of goody bags for a collection of adults who are so selfish that they feel entitled to complain about the child nearby who's making delighted shrieks because he's never seen clouds so close.

I'm simply not about to preemptively beg forgiveness should my son disturb your flight, and I'm certainly not going to pay some kind of tax to every other passenger just because my wife and I wanted to get away for a few days and we figured our son might want to come along.

The next time you get on a flight and see a couple - or god forbid, a solo parent - escorting a kid to his seat or attempting to calm a tantrum or hoping to god no one poops their pants, consider for a second that the parents flying with kids are having a MUCH WORSE TIME than you are.

They're the ones who deserve a stupid goody bag. With extra liquor nips.

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