
First, I’ll start off by saying kudos to the people and parents who actually give a damn because they put themselves in other people’s shoes and probably wouldn’t want to experience all kinds of migraine-causing mayhem while they travel, too. [Disclaimer: I’m a mother, and I love my child, but not in a million years would I allow my daughter to behave like she belonged in a barn.]
The hotel isn’t a playground where you drop off your children with a friend’s children in their own room, unsupervised, while you go off and have separate adult time pretending that these offspring are not your responsibility.
Guess what? No one likes your kids banging on the walls and blasting the Disney channel with decibels so loud that you can hear Mickey Mouse sing 3 floors down. Nope, not even Minnie Mouse, herself, would want to experience that continuous torture. As for them peeling off the Do Not Disturb signs outside of unsuspecting guests’ doors thinking that they are free souvenirs for the taking, that’s just plain obnoxious, and I hope with all sincerity that your kids barge into your rooms before the sun rises, since housekeeping couldn’t tell that “privacy please” was requested on most of my floor in the early hours. I wish upon you all the joys of hearing twenty elephants run up and down outside of your door at 2am every night for the next year, because that’s what it sounded like when your youngsters used the 4th floor as a racetrack, screaming, yodeling, and giggling, in the middle of the night.
It’s all well-and-good that there’s a hotel manager to report these things to, but you see, by that time, the damage has been already done – and I’m awake; when I wanted to be asleep, which may surprise you that most people do once it gets dark. [Newsflash: the hotel manager isn’t your babysitter, either.]
Perhaps there should be penalties for those who insist on being inconsiderate, like paying twice the price if they aren’t nice. I don’t know, but people like this are one of my pet peeves. Get a nanny, grab control of your kids, or get out of here.
My last statement applies to restaurants, too.
If you want to scream and run in a restaurant, please consider going to Chuck E Cheese. Some people like to sit in a restaurant and talk quietly to the person across from them at the table without having to scream because the adults and children at the table next to them are so boisterous that you can’t even hear yourself think before your first cup of coffee. Believe it or not, some waiters like to carry trays of food to customers without playing dodgeball with children, as these little people run in a circular pattern around and in-between tables. It’s just what I hear, but I tend to think it carries a lot of truth. Really people – get a grip. This isn’t your living room, it’s a public place. As for the noisy father at the table next to us who grabbed the small girl who would not sit down and toured the restaurant for an hour on full-speed ahead, and flipped her upside down after breakfast – I hope she barfs on your shoes.
Please be nice to passengers with connecting flights. I know, I know, we all want to get off the plane first. But, when you have a total of 23.6 minutes to get from one side of an airport to another, even with the use of a tram or bus, to catch your next flight, it’s the slowpokes in front of you that will cause you to run like the wind and still be praying that your next plane hasn’t left the gate. I don’t even think that this is really any passengers’ fault – well, except for the guy that gets up, adjusts his shirt and tie for ten minutes while blocking the aisle, almost hits the person behind him in the head with his heavy carry-on that should have been bagged and tagged below, and proceeds to button every. last. button. on his coat before disembarking.
Airlines: instead of offering to charge me $35 for ½ an inch more leg room on my flight, or the privilege for boarding in group 16 instead of group 17 for another $26.75, I’d gladly pay you an unspecified amount of money (ok, within limits) to GET OFF THE DAMN PLANE first, (or at least in a priority way.) Give me a bracelet that allows me to get off the flying metal tube before every other person who already got where they are going and doesn’t have to do a 2000 yard dash to catch the next plane to her final destination. [Insert prayer hands here; United Airlines et al: you can thank me for my brilliance later when you steal this novel idea by giving me first class tickets to everywhere I want to go, in perpetuity.]
The seating area by the gate at the airport is not a runway for toddlers. I really didn’t want my coffee kicked over at 6am as your children ran in circles at Gate C34. Really, I didn’t. Trust me if I did, you would have been the first to know. As for the two year-olds running past seated travelers at the speed of light, did you happen to notice that every single adult in LAX was giving you, the parents, the evil eye? Yes, the dirty looks were meant for you. This is not daycare. We don’t want to be climbed on or clinged to. Some of us even tried to tolerate the video game shrill electronic and repetitive music that was at maximum stereophonic volume; but give us a small break, please after 45 continuous crazy minutes of it – or consider handing out Excedrin to everyone in a 100 foot radius before the flight. I think I speak for most people, when I say we don’t want to clutch our computers as if our lives depended on it, because your kiddos think that the charging cords are for skipping rope.
As for me, maybe I’ll start an anti-chaos campaign for those with frequent flyer miles. What do you think?