DadWagon has previously (and correctly) defended the right of children to be as annoying as adults on airplanes, but my 3-year-old girl has developed a new kind of menacing behavior on commercial flights: a loud and verbal curiosity about airplane disasters.
It’s not that she’s worried. Quite the contrary. She has her fears, though they change quickly around this age (studies show strangers become less scary just as monsters become more scary). She is definitely not afraid of planes. It’s just that in the infinite juncture between watching Kung Fu Panda while the plane is still parked at the gate and watching Kung Fu Panda once it’s safe to turn on all approved electronic devices at 10,000 feet, Dalia has only the colorful, clearly drawn Airline Safety Pamphlet to keep her entertained.
On our American Airlines flight to Miami this weekend, Dalia once again asked loudly to be led through drawn instructions about what to do in the event of fire, smoke, water landing or drop in cabin pressure. We whispered the answers to her, being truthful if a little evasive. She, however, held her end of the conversation in her loud, blunt quizzing-voice that could be heard three rows up and three rows back. As in, “When the plane lands in water, do we die or not die?”
As a frequent flier who has also from time to time morbidly pondered the unthinkable, I would probably rather hear a child screaming her lungs out or grunting a diaper full than have someone’s pre-schooler spend the initial ascent telling rows 19-26 all the ways one can die on a plane.
But there’s a sweetness to her curiosity. Disaster and death to her are total abstractions, as they are to all children under the age of 5. And even after 5, much of the work is about how to cope with fears and anxieties that they do understand. It’s one of the things that makes children children. It all reminds me, as it should anyone who was born in the 1970’s, of one thing: the Challenger disaster.
Challenger was, of course, the space shuttle that disintegrated shortly after liftoff in 1986. But it wasn’t just another NASA fuck-up. There was a schoolteacher on board, a fact which gave nearly every school in America the bright idea to turn the 11am liftoff into a live-on-TV curriculum event. So the children of America, who had been learning about the six brave astronauts and the teacher Christa McAuliffe, were watching live when all seven were blown to oblivion.
Imagine if, in the early morning of 9/11, 40 million schoolkids had gathered around to just watch the twin towers because of they had been learning all about stock brokers for school. That’s sort of what the Challenger was like.
No wonder there are 91 books with the keywords Challenger Disaster in Amazon’s children’s book section. Why do I think Dalia would love to read them all?
I read my son a book called “The Hatchet” this week about a teenager in a small plane when the pilot dies. Good book. I recommend it. 🙂
Totally. The premise of that book is great for kids… not just disaster, but then the teenager gets to figure out how to survive alone in the wilderness. Because I guess the flip side of disaster is courage and independence, which are already starting to be a big deal in the minds of the preschool set..
great post. i used to fly alone a lot as a kid, from age 6 on, and would vividly imagine how i would save myself in the event of disaster, always with the efficiency of nancy drew in a jack london story. those cartoons in the back of the seat also entertain my 3 yo, while they now terrify me. i generally hide them behind the vintage puke bags, while he pulls them out to study.
We were just on a plane with my 5 yr old daughter who’s been on tons of flights. But this time she too found the emergency cards and asked question after question, very matter of factly. Somehow I told her the story of the plane landing on the Hudson. She said she wants the plane to go underwater so she can see the fish!
No way you could train a 3 year old to be as annoying as you. Rights have nothing to do with it. Correct or not. Maybe Christine’s daughter but not yours.
Carly: you can definitely get all Nancy Drew next time your kiddies are in peril (which, they being kids, will probably be on a weekly basis).
Christine: That’s hilarious. Finally, an upside to the water-landing.
Max: Correct.