When you have a child, you become part of a tribe of sorts. There are things that you discuss only with other parents – and usually only after the two beers you can fit in after your children's bedtime at 8pm and your own at 9:45pm (wild times, I know). These are things that seem frankly criminal when you write them down, like how sleepless nights you fantasized about leaving your screaming and crying child on a stranger's porch (I am not a monster - I would have at least rang the doorbell.). I've now added another story to this cache of dark humor: air travel.
Flying with a child of any age is challenging. Hell, flying as an adult is no great shakes. It seems like planes are being designed to pack the maximum amount of people in the minimum amount of comfort. The economics of airlines dictates that planes are not airworthy until passengers are skin-to-skin with the strangers sitting next to them. This type of thing, plus the fact that a plane is really a metal tube held up by a suspension of belief in gravity, used to make me dread flying.
Now, I have so many more things dread as a parent flying with my child. The first major change between your old travel habits and your family travel habits is the amount of baggage you require. Aito is around 20 pounds and, if packed properly, fits on my lap. Despite the relatively compact nature of my son, he requires another 80 pounds of luggage, not including the baby carry on with diapers, wipes, snacks and clothes, as well as the significant portion of our own carry on given over to his books, toys and eating utensils. My wife and I must have looked like especially put upon pack animals pushing the six check in bags, the three carry on, and our son through the airport.
Thankfully, we were able to check everything and then quickly breeze through security riding on the backs of understanding unicorns. I am, of course, joking. The Edmonton Airport Security – the alert and tireless force that let a passenger fly after taking away his pipe bomb in 2014 – were very concerned about the baby bag. As well they should be.
After all, how could they be sure that the baby we had with us was in fact ours? More importantly, did he pack that bag himself? So the stalwarts of airport security had my wife – who I suspect has radicalized over the course of our marriage – rummage through the bag to pull out the suspicious object. This was, of course, wipes. After opening the potentially lethal package for the security officer, we were allowed to keep our wipes. We cackled manically. Our plan worked. We were now free to commit acts of extreme hygiene at 30,000 feet.
Although we did not, in fact, have a bomb or any act of terror planned for the long flight to Japan, we did feel like terrorists. People boarding the plane flinched at the sight of an infant, anticipating 10 hours of uninterrupted crying. It was my first time flying with a child and, aside from the metric ton of luggage, I had prepared as I usually did – I brought a book.
....
Sorry, I had to take a moment there to let the laughter pass. As you more experienced parents will know, a book is a bit ambitious for in-flight entertainment. I did not do enough reading on the plane to finish a postcard, let alone a book. What was I doing for 10 hours? My wife and I were both providing non-stop entertainment, snacks and soothing to the volatile and sleepless infant we had smuggled aboard. In retrospect, I owe an apology to the Edmonton airport security. They should have tasered us at the check-in counter.
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