OK, so first off, sorry I've been away. A little friend of mine called "Busy" showed up at my door about a month ago and I couldn't get him to leave until after the New Year... needless to say I've not posted any blogs at all in a very long time, either on this blog or on my other one. The past month has been a whirlwind of travel, work, family, and holidays, and I'm only just now getting back on my feet.
So to start off the new year, I thought I'd share a post about my most recent flight experience. I'm sure some of you will be able to relate to this one. On January 5th I was scheduled to fly back to Los Angeles from Birmingham, AL. LA has about 4 airports surrounding it, the largest and most miserable being the infamous Los Angeles International Airport (LAX). I live a good 45 minute drive (taking traffic into consideration) from LAX, so I use Burbank airport instead... it's smaller and north of where I live, which is nice because I don't have to drive through the city or any heavy traffic areas to get to where I'm going. So using Southwest Airlines, I had booked my flight out of Birmingham to Burbank, with a lay-over and plane swap taking place in Phoenix, Arizona. I awoke on the morning of Jan 5th to say my goodbyes to family, friends, Birmingham, sweet tea, manners, polite speech, civility, and everything else the south has that LA certainly doesn't. Then I drove to the Birmingham airport where we quickly discovered that due to heavy fog in the area, my flight had been delayed a full hour. The problem was that my lay-over in Phoenix was only an hour, so now I was in danger of missing my connecting flight to Burbank thanks to the delay in Birmingham.
Well we finally got off the ground about 55 minutes after our scheduled departure time, and the pilot informed us that due to heavy fog and a strong headwind upwards of 200 mph, we probably wouldn't make up much lost time on our trip to Phoenix. I was sitting near the rear of the aircraft in a window seat, comfortably reading a book I had gotten for Christmas, The Reason For God by Dr. Timothy Keller, (which I highly recommend by the way, so far it's excellent). Next to me was a middle aged woman reading a copy of Twilight (if that isn't a microcosm for all that is wrong in America, I don't know what is...), and next to her in the aisle seat was a young mother. Across the aisle in the next row over was this young mother's daughter, a precious little blonde headed toddler, and next to her was the girls father / mother's husband. One big happy family. Until we got airborne. That's when this precious miracle and blessing from God started wailing her little totally depraved head off. And she didn't stop. The. Entire. Flight.
Needless to say I'd had enough of God's Little Blessing screaming in my ear, and I would like to offer this word of advice to any future parents or parents of small ones out there: Your little bundle of joy may be one of God's children, but it's certainly not one of mine. If you can't keep it quiet in public, please don't fly across America. Furthermore, this father's extent of discipline and control of the situation was to let his daughter scream the whole way. Occasionally he'd turn to her and say quietly and politely, "Shhh. It's OK. Please don't yell... Stop it, please". I appreciate the fact that you've decided to be a civil father figure and all, but c'mon, seriously? Since when did politely telling a youngster to refrain from public wailing replace the force and instant results garnered by a swift kick to the head? I'm not advocating beating your children... but if it makes them shut up on cross-country flights, you may want to consider the option. That's all I'm trying to say, really. And for the record, I love kids. Really I do. I worked with them all summer. I just wish they came with a "ring, vibrate, or silent" function like most cell phones...
Happy New Year. Enjoy the picture, taken with my new iPhone... photographic proof of the doctrine of total depravity...
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