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PAGE 8, NOVEMBER 3, 2008, THE ISLANDER
Dam Barry.
Terror on Flight 611
By Dave Barry
Recently, my wife and I took our 8-
month-old daughter on a trip involv
ing five plane flights in one week.
Many people would be reluctant to
travel with a baby that small, but we
had a compelling reason: We have
Fig Newtons for brains.
An intelligent person, or even a
reasonably bright fungus, would
know that two people cannot pos
sibly carry both a baby and all the
supplies the baby needs, includ
ing stroller, car seat, clothes, dia
pers, industrial-sized bale of wipes,
stuffed bear, stuffed tiger, stuffed
frog, stuffed paramecium, etc. The
total weight of all these supplies can
be hundreds of times the weight of
the actual baby. This is why your
famous explorers rarely traveled
with babies. If Magellan had tried
to sail around the world with a baby
on board, his ship would have sunk
at the dock from the weight of the
formula alone.
We were one of those wretched
traveling families you see getting
on planes—the kind where you don't
actually see the people, just this
mound of baby equipment shuffling
slowly down the aisle toward you.
This sight is always hugely popular
with the other passengers, some of
whom will yank open the emergency
exits and dive out of the plane.
Because they know what babies
do on planes: They stand on their
parents' laps and stick their heads
up over the seats, so they can get
maximum range when they shriek.
On a baby-intensive airplane, you
see shrieking baby heads constantly
popping up all over, like prairie dogs
from hell.
As a parent in this situation, your
fervent hope is that the other babies
on the plane will shriek louder than
yours, thereby diverting passenger
hatred away from you. It would not
surprise me to learn that some par
ents creep under the seats and pinch
other people's babies to set them off.
I myself would never do such a thing.
I carry a slingshot.
The trick for keeping your baby
from crying on the plane is to come
up with a new activity each time the
baby gets bored. A standard baby
gets bored every 15 seconds, so on
a four-hour flight, you, as a parent,
need to come up with 960 different
activities. By the third hour of the
flight, your standards are pretty low.
Baby wants to play in the airplane
toilet? Sure! Baby wants to crawl
into the cockpit and bite the navi
gator on the ankle? Whatever baby
wants!
Here's what a stupid parent I
am: On our first flight, I brought
an airline just for people with babies
(it could be called "Shrieking Prai
rie Dogs From Hell Airlines"). The
planes would not have seats: Every
one would squat on the floor. The
preflight safety lecture would consist
of a demonstration of how to get a
Lego out of a child's mouth. The in
flight meal would be Cheerios eaten
off the floor. If the noise reached a
certain decibel level, plastic tubes
would automatically pop out of the
ceiling to dispense liquid horse tran
quilizer to the parents. The in-flight
movie would be "Farm Faces," star
ring George Clooney as: worm.
This classic DAVE BARRY column
was originally published December
17, 2001. (C) 2008 The Miami Herald.
Dist. by Tribune Media Services. Dave
Barry is a humor columnist for the
Miami Herald. Write to him do Trop
ic Magazine, The Miami Herald, One
Herald Plaza, Miami FL 33132) □
two newspapers on board. I did not
read one word of either one. What
I read was a book called "Farm
Faces," which is made entirely of
cloth. There's a cow on the cover, and
each page has a new animal. Here's
the entire text: "chick," "lamb," "pig,"
"duck," "horse," "worm." I read this
book to my daughter maybe 40 times,
using a dramatic and excited voice to
show her how fascinating it was.
I mean, talk about a surprise plot
twist! I NEVER would have guessed
worm!
I also tried to interest Sophie in
the in-flight movie, which was "The
Perfect Storm," in which George
Clooney goes to sea in a fishing
boat and is killed by special effects.
Sophie did not care for it. I could see
her point; I thought "Farm Faces"
was less formulaic.
It goes without saying that your
baby will poop massively on the
plane. This must have something
to do with atmospheric pressure,
because it never fails. Each year,
more baby poop is produced on air
planes than in all of Portugal. For
tunately, most planes have a little
changing shelf in the bathroom,
which is the perfect size for a baby,
provided that it is a baby gerbil.
For human babies, you have to
use the seat, which then must be
burned when the plane lands. The
only really practical place to change
a baby on an airplane would be on
the wing, but of course you can't
take the baby out there. The other
passengers would never let you back
inside.
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His life changed in 1952, when he decided to
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