“Oh damn, there’s a kid…” What young parent has never heard this phrase of welcome or felt this hint of annoyance, sometimes tinged with despair, in his seat neighbor when he disembarks in the car with a baby or young children?
The challenge of silencing one’s offspring at all costs (“No, my dear, we don’t imitate the sounds of the cow on the train”), so as not to interfere with the office meeting that is organized in the square, the telephone conversation of the tough granny of the sheet or the Netflix series of the teenager who has visibly forgotten his headphones.
This loneliness of the parent in the face of the intolerance of certain travelers has been illustrated for several years in videos published on social networks, in particular in the “Passenger Shaming” accounts (which denounce incivility on planes while publicly displaying individuals filmed without their knowledge).
The latest was posted on TikTok by a passenger on a flight to Florida (@mjgrabowski) on April 18. We see a man vociferating for long minutes while his wife tries in vain to calm him down. When the steward tries in an almost frightened voice: “You are shouting, sir”the American roared: “THE BABY TOO!” Did that son of a bitch pay you more than me? », exasperated by the crying of an infant, who, frightened by the scene, howls even more. The video ends as this friendly gentleman refuses to leave the plane, thus forcing all the passengers to return to the terminal.
At the beginning of February, in Cyprus, before the takeoff of a plane bound for Israel, it was a misplaced pacifier that triggered the fury of another traveler. While the mother was looking for another solution to calm her crying baby, the man, at the end of his tether, took revenge on a porthole which he smashed with his fists, forcing everyone to evacuate the aircraft. .
societal ambivalence
But it is to a New Zealand musician that we owe the prize. His video, posted in October 2022, has been viewed 12.7 million times on TikTok. Henry Beasley filmed himself during his flight to Berlin, with the continuous screaming of a toddler in the background, attributing to him, not without humour, “a 10/10 for his performance” voice after pleading: “take him home!” » His post had triggered thousands of reactions, some simply proposing to ban children on planes, or the payment of a supplement for the nuisance caused.
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