Acy, equalize his eardrums!

I don’t want them to pop!

Eardrums! Drink, drink! make him drink. Acy, do you hear me? Acy, hold the bottle like that. You gotta make sure his eardrums equalize. Put food in his mouth.

Yesterday I had the most annoying passenger ever next to me on my flight from Fort Lauderdale to Dallas, en route to my eventual destination in California.

It started differently. To the left of me was a young woman with a baby on her lap. The baby was restless and vocal and didn’t sleep for a minute. But there was no crying, no distress. Even if there were, I wouldn’t have been bothered. In fact, right at the beginning of the flight I smiled at the baby and let the mother know that I’m all good about sitting next to them.

“I have four kids I said! Nothing about kids scares me.”

“Oh, God, Thank you so much! You never know…”.

She seemed genuinely relieved and we chatted for a bit — about our respective kids. Her son was seven months old and across the aisle sat her husband with the older kid. The older boy was twenty-two months old.

My older boys are two years apart but then I have twins who are two minutes apart, so I like said — I’ve been through it all, including long-haul flights with my kids on my lap.

Halfway through the flight, they swapped seats so now the father sat next to me. He was on his own. The kids stayed with the mother.