I was waiting for my luggage at the Oakland Airport yesterday when I noticed a woman yelling at a man who was about in his late fifties. She was furious. She came at him like she was going to hit him. But just as she did, a young man grabbed her and held her back. He took her back to her luggage and her young child about 25 feet away, then went back to the man she had been trying to attack. I didn’t hear what he said, but the older man calmly said, “Are you going to hit me?” He didn’t seem afraid. He more seemed like if the guy hit him, it would prove him right. The young man just walked away.
A few minutes later I asked the older man what had happened. He said quit calmly and with great confidence that the woman’s child (who looked to be about 2) was crying during the whole flight. He said he told her that she shouldn’t fly with a child who couldn’t remain calm.
I was shocked. I told him that I was a clinical psychologist and that I thought that was an enormously cruel thing to say and that he should apologize to her. He calmly reasserted that she shouldn’t fly with a child who cried. He was so sure of himself. I told him that he had really added to the mother’s stress. But he was unmoved.
I later found out from another couple who had been trying to comfort the woman—who continued to cry—that the woman had been taken off the airplane in a wheel chair.
Later I found myself wanting to say to the guy, “Maybe she was coming to her dying mother who had never seen the grandchild. Maybe she was bringing the child for treatment of cancer. Maybe the child had flown before without any problem.”
What was so striking to me in this cruel act was the man’s absolute confidence that he was right. I suspect that being right is very important to him.
I have no idea how a bystander could do anything other than comfort the woman. (I went over to her and told her that she had my sympathy and that I had told the guy that what he did was really cruel.)
What could you say to this guy that might deter his behavior?
The experience of flying (or shopping or going to a movie) is a social act that requires a measure of flexibility for it to work. I think the mistake people make is convincing themselves that having paid for their ticket, they’re entitled to a hassle-free experience. Quite the opposite: every time we enter a theater or an airplane or a restaurant, we take the risk that something unpleasant will happen. I look at it is my number is up. It’s my turn to take one for the collective good.
If I’m that man, I try to remember the many other quiet flights I’ve experienced. And beyond that, the woman is having a much worse day than me.
Great post, Tony!
Ah, we humans, what a sad bunch we all are. This reminds me of something that happened many years ago, during my bus driving days. I stopped at a Kaiser clinic and a woman boarded w/ two or three children, one of whom– a boy of three–was wailing, disobedient and LOUD. The embarrassed woman explained to me that the boy’s mother had to be admitted to the hospital and she was suddenly charged w/ his care. His wails and refusal to stay seated were increasingly annoying. The scale of passenger satisfaction was far into “Grumpy”. And my job was to keep everybody happy and get them where they were going. (And how do you do anything when a small child is wailing and refusing?!?!)
Suddenly, propelled by a bit of “motherwit” beyond understanding, I found myself pulling the bus over, setting the brake and approaching the child. I picked him up gently and sat him on the seat, looked him in the eye and told him that he was missing mommy and mommy would be okay. And right now, he needed to grab hold of his blankie and sit quietly in the seat so we could get him home. To my amazement, he actually had a blanky, which he held onto and soon fell asleep. We resumed our trip in peace.
So what is my point, beyond bragging about a success? First, maybe all of us need to feel both permission AND responsibility to help out in tough situations–like being trapped at 30,000 feet w/ a wailing two-year old. Second, probably all of us need commiseration and an opportunity to feel “right”, as in okay to have these (mean) feelings, (annoying) children, (imbecilic) inability to cope with the situation. Third, if we are the guy who said the (least nice part of) what most of us thought at least once, we may have to cling to being “right” in order to deal with our embarrassment. (And, if we are a guy of a certain age, say my age, we may have little else to offer in such situations because we probably had little opportunity to develop skills for dealing w/ small children–a thought that comforts me when I’m reminiscing about the failure of the Equal Rights Amendment to be ratified.)
I have been thinking about your question: “what could you say to this guy that might deter his behavior?” It strikes me that he has a lot in common with the wailing two-year old, in that they are both very uncomfortable and they both have limited skill and/or ability to usefully communicate or ameliorate their misery. And they are both demanding that somebody do something to make it better.
Hopefully, we give the two-year old a pass because he’s two and it’s the task of adults to ascertain his needs and assuage his misery as best we can. But we evaluate the behavior of the older man through our lens of expectation and judge him “cruel.” Of course, the behavior of both is a cruel assault on our sense of well-being during that plane ride. But the guy “should know better”, he’s a grown up, after all.
However, if we look at the commonalities between these two and decide to treat the man’s troublesome communication as we do the child’s, we may have better results. When a child cries, if we are skilled, we begin by validating the feelings: “Yes, sweetie, I know you’re upset.” Then we do our best to discover what the trouble is and to provide what comfort we can–blankie, bottle, story, etc. Finally, we calmly and evenly tell the child that things will get better and, for now, this is the best we can do. Often this results in the child becoming calm, albeit not always, life being the imperfect mess that it is.
What we have done, of course, is taken the issue of being “right” clean off the table. Then we can focus on what can be done with the resources available. For this gentleman, it could be trading travel horror stories, an inquiry about his own family, a discussion of sports or an inquiry about his travel plans. We don’t know anything about his situation. He could be returning from the funeral of a beloved grandchild and unbearably pained by the crying of a child or he could be an old curmudgeon with a huge “Girl Scout cookie vendors will be summarily shot” sign on his door. In either case, we will probably be doing a service for our own comfort and that of the mother of the crying child.
I was enriched by the initial post and the responses. I loved the idea of stepping back and seeing both parties (elderly curmudgeon and distressed two year old) as simply acting out of distressed feelings that they didn’t have the information and/or the skill to treat differently. It was a reminder that I have NEVER been successful at changing someone’s mind mind when i’m not liking them, and I have OFTEN experienced a shocking turn around when I first accept someone exactly where they are, and then move forward with them from there. Thank you all for a brilliant start to my Sunday morning.
Hekate is certainly right – the man’s behavior is exactly like that of the two-year-old’s. The child has not figured out a way to modulate his behavior in the face of his misery, nor has the 50-something man. Most of us have been on a bus/train/plane with a crying child and our reactions may be, “Wow, that poor kid must have an earache,” or “That kid has a set of pipes, I hope he falls asleep soon.” But we keep those charitable and uncharitable reactions to ourselves, or share them quietly with a travel partner.
This situation seems to have occurred because the man was unable to keep his thoughts to himself and did not find a sympathetic fellow passenger to whom he could have quietly vented. Maybe this is a lesson to all of us to listen to those around us – even if they are curmudgeons – we might be keeping them from acts of unneccssary cruelty.