It appears that the witnesses as well as BB commenters are upset that the mother didn’t even try to control her child nor did she apologize to the people who were spat upon. If my child had such issues, you can bet that I’d keep him/her away from other people and apologize profusely. This speaks volumes about her parenting and interpersonal skills.
By the way, many illnesses (some serious) can be spread by spit. And while some people may think it’s no big deal, many others might seriously disagree with that notion.
Edit: Did you even read the story? The parents acted as if nothing extraordinary was even happening as they kept looking away…from their own child.
Once I was travelling and when I got to the TSA checkpoint I realized that I had a knife in my pocket. It was a nice knife (a Leathernam) and I didn’t want to lose it, so I asked the TSA folks what to do. They suggested that I talk to travellers assistance.
Travellers assistance suggested that I go back to the ticket counter for the airline I was using. They will usually ship something like that to my destination (or home), they told me.
So I went back to the counter and explained my situation.
“You’re flying Ryan Air, right?” the attendant asked me.
“Yes, I am.”
At that point he literally just laughed in my face and walked away.
Luckily it was a small airport (Reagan National) so I was able to walk back to my car and leave it there. But I told myself never again on Ryan Air…
Really? SeaTac has little ship it kiosks where you just pay and pull out an envelope and address label for small things like that then you just fill out the address dump in your knife or whatever and put it in the mail slot. I don’t recall the payment method as it has been years now but it was easy and since I apologized before even dumping stuff into the trays they let me skip back to the front of the line after mailing off my geeky swiss army knife.
Are we absolutely sure this story wasn’t just part of one family’s scheme to get around restrictions on transporting livestock? I want to see that kid’s birth certificate.
The expectation isn’t that you can get perfect compliance out of a two year old; but that you’ll at least try and at least pretend to be apologetic toward the strangers being sprayed with unpleasant fluids because you aren’t succeeding.
It’s the complete failure to bother with those steps that makes the subject of this merry tale totally unsypathetic; not the fact that they lack superhuman control over children in the demon-larva stage.
