Courtesy-NOT an international language

I've always heard the complaints of other people who have had terrible flights that usually involve children such as, "The baby was screaming the whole time." "The kids were fighting/yelling/talking too loud/etc." but I had never experienced a bad flight because of kids. Maybe this is because I'm a parent and I don't notice the noises that kids make as easily as I have the motherly instinct to tune them out. I sometimes have wondered if people exaggerate the story a little to make it seem like the worst flight ever, but now I know it is possible. I only know this because I experienced the worst flight ever.

It started out like a normal flight. It was just myself and my daughter in our row of three seats which was nice. We got settled in and a mother with her two children came and sat down behind us. The airplane took off, got up the appropriate altitude which allows the tray tables to come down, and I was quickly fading off to sleep. Those of you who don't know the traveling part of me, I might tend to be a slight bit narcoleptic during travel. As in, I probably shouldn't hold a driver's license because the very motion of any type of vehicle sends me into a happy sleep world that is wonderful and cozy. Moving on. I was no more than 2 seconds away from entering that happy land when, BANG!. What the mother? Someone kicked the back of my chair. I sat up to give them the clue that I noticed. BANG BANG BANG. The kicking continued. I put my seat back in the upright position thinking that the mother would take notice that I was being disturbed and make her, what I found out to be later, horrible child, stop kicking the back of the seat.

He didn't stop.

I put my tray table down and crammed my oversized head onto it in attempt to get some sleep while having my lower back still massaged by the incessant kicking of this miniature terror.

Again, 2 seconds away from happy land, "MOM!" Now I open my eyes to see magazines coming over the back of my daughters seat and dropping onto her head. She in turn was highly irritated and was sending them back. No sooner would they disappear back, then they would drop on her head again. I grabbed the magazine, peered over the seat, gave the kid the dirty eye, and placed the magazine in our magazine holder. Over the course of the next 15 minutes, every item previously held in the seat backs from the row behind us, was launched onto my daughters head, and into our row. This consisted of three US Airways magazines, three safety instructional cards, two barf bags, and two sky mall magazines. I thought maybe the mom was asleep so during the course of this I peered back again only to see that the mom was indeed handing the child the safety instruction card to throw over the seat so that he would be occupied. This was NOT okay with me.

Finally after we had every piece of paraphernalia that could be thrown over the seat, I thought it might quiet down. Nope.

Now the tray table was down, the kid was out of his seat belt, laying all the way down on his seat with his feet propped up on the table, incessantly kicking the back of Madison's seat so violently that it was causing her head to bob back and forth quite drastically. She was highly irritated and getting very angry as was I, but I told her to simply turn around and ask him to stop kicking her seat. She did. He didn't. He said something of the orient nature, and kept kicking. Great. Language barrier. He kept kicking and kicking the entire two+ hour flight. I turned around and asked him to stop many times, gave him the evil eye, wished horrible things to happen to him (this was only in my head of course), called the stewardess over to ask for help of which the only thing she accomplished was asking the lady (in an extremely loud voice because that always helps them understand), "Where are you from?"

"Las Angeles" came the answer.

"No," she said, "What ethnicity?"

"Chinese."

Fantastic. Is it okay in China to have a horrible child? I thought they were all about killing the bad kids to keep the good ones or something like that. (Wow, I think I just offended a country there) Nothing was ever resolved. It literally was the worst flight I have ever been on. It was so ridiculously horrible that if one more thing happened I thought I might just laugh at the unrealness of it all.

Then it happened.

Silence.

No more kicking. No more incessant jabbering from the orient. No more paraphernalia dropping on my daughters head. No more noise. Finally.

Then, the smell of vomit permeated the air. This was quickly followed by a continued wet gagging sound and more wafts of vomit. I couldn't hold myself back. I laughed. Just a little, but what a perfect ending to the worst airplane ride ever. What a horrible little foreign child.

The last and completed moment of the flight was when we were finally out of the gate and walking down the terminal and the horrible child, who wasn't watching where he was going, turned and ran smack into Madison. I wanted to have him deported. I just didn't have the number to call. Too bad.

He needs to play on the playground for bad kids.