I know, when my Mom and sister read this, they’ll shake their head and say ‘That’s Scott..’, and I’ve struggled as I debated whether to do these things, and then, afterwards, if I even should have done them. But, I did, and probably would choose to do so in the future, and, well, the second of the two is something Suzanne and I will remember for a long time, so, there is that.
Incident the First: I’m flying back home after a couple of days in Dayton; this is the Dayton to Detroit leg. I’m sitting in row 3, behind me are three kids, I’d guess ranging from ten to fifteen years old, (the plane is one seat, an aisle, and then two seats). For most of the flight, I don’t hear them or quite honestly, even recognize that I have three teenagers behind me. But, as we approach Detroit, the electronic devices have to be turned off, and I take my headphones off, and I can hear them, and particularly, the older boy, who every time the flight attendant makes an announcement (and he made a lot of them, I know that before this started I had the thought that he sure was going out of his way to make sure we were informed) would begin a series of comments about the guy (he definitely sounded like Bradley and Victor from the Scott Paulsen days.) Not just one comment, a continuous string of comments, and not quietly, loud enough that I and others could hear them, and his brother and sister were urging him to be quiet.
Plane lands..we stand up, and the comments continue and the younger boys says “you’d better be glad Mom can’t hear any of this!”. I guess it was that statement that did it, but, I’m not sure when I decided to do something. We get off, I loiter around to see the family reunite, they walk off and stop at the bathroom and as the women go in I walk up to the Dad and the two boys and say, excuse me, you might want to know that two of his children were perfect on the flight, but he might want to have a talk with the boy.
Walk off, don’t look back, don’t know what happened, don’t care I guess.
Incident the second: Suzanne and I are waiting in line for the Shake Shack in NYC; it’s a long line, about an hour wait and we’re there with plenty of others. There’s two locals (guys) in front of us, and two locals (women) behind us. About 30 minutes in, this kid walks up, behind us in line, and just settles into line, right in front of the women. Those two seem kind of taken aback, don’t do anything other than comment and that it certainly takes some moxie to do what this kid (he’s eight…I found this out later) did, and make some comment about walking with intent and getting what you want.
So, I turn around, and mention to the boy that, well, the back of the line is back there.
The boy is very soft-spoken in his reply, I have to bend down to hear him…his Mom has told him to get in line here. Ask him where his Mom is, don’t get much of an answer. Tell him, well, the back of the line is back there, and if he stays where he is I’ll point it out to the guys up front, and they’ll make him move to the back….it’s his choice, go back now, or go back later.
Kid doesn’t move. Mention the ‘threat’ of going back again, but, really knew I couldn’t follow through; why leave the problem with the burger people. Kid eventually gets places his order, and while we are waiting with buzzers for our food I glance over and watch as the kid goes back to his Mom and they wait for his/their order (it did end up looking like he just got food for himself….if he had gotten food for two I might have gone over and said something else…turns out I didn’t have to!).
Anyway, I figure that’s it, our buzzer goes off, Suzanne has found a table, we’re eating our food. And….
“Excuse me, how old are you?” It’s the Mom, asking me this question. “Forty”
“How dare you tell a eight-year old boy to go to the back of the line?!?”
Now, while we were eating, I had asked Suzanne how she felt about my butting in and she said she was a little embarrassed but it was not a big deal. Here, she’s the first one to say something,
“Maam, your son cut in line!”
Mom just starts going off….
“How dare you…blah de blah who do you think you are”….
At this point I’m waving my hand in a dismissive gesture and am telling her “why don’t you just go away?” Because, it’s clear now, no matter what I might have done to do the right thing, this lesson has been completely lost on its target audience.
But now, whenever we think about this day of the trip, we’ll talk about this crazy woman and her very direct little boy!
