How to Interact with Children on an Airplane

As any of you who follow me on Facebook likely know, I spent the week before last at the ABFSE Annual Meeting in Myrtle Beach.  This is the annual meeting of educators from the 60 or so mortuary science programs around the country and we were stuck on the beach this year.  Unfortunately, it doesn’t get any better next year as we’ll have to deal with the swaying palm trees and Pacific breezes of Los Angeles. Ugh…I’m already dreading it.

Here I am, not hating children, while "working" at Myrtle Beach.

Anyway, due to the locale of this year’s meeting, air travel was necessary which brings me to the topic of this blog: the proper way to interact with children; specifically, when stuck in the claustrophobic confines of a metal tube careening across the sky at nearly 600 mph.

Let me give you a little backstory lest you think I’m some sort of abominable monster who hates children.  Many of you likely know that I lost my son 9-year-old son, Jace, back in 2008.  As I look back, I believe my distaste for children (and let me be specific: other people’s children) may have taken root riiiight about that time. So, regarding my concern about the perception of me hating kids, “hate” is such as strong term so let’s try to find another slightly less-pejorative term and we’ll all learn some new words together…one of my favorite things!

OK, let’s try eschew. “I eschew children.” No, that doesn’t work. According to Webster’s, to “eschew” something means to deliberately avoid or abstain from. It’s in the ballpark but not quite what we’re looking for. Let’s try abhor. “I abhor children.” No, that doesn’t work either. Abhor is to “regard with disgust and hatred” and I’d like to avoid the “H” word if at all possible. Ah, I’ve got it! Let’s try loathe. “I loathe children.” To loathe is to “feel intense dislike or disgust for” – I think we’ve got a winner!

So, here I am, on my way back to Iowa a couple weeks ago. One would think a week on the beach would put one in a good mood but I hadn’t slept well the previous night and was forced to get up at 7 AM EST (yes, Eastern time…that’s 6 AM according to my sensitive Circadian rhythms!)  That’s another thing: how in the name of hell does anyone thrive in the Eastern time zone?!  Everything starts an hour later than here yet the day still starts at 8 AM the next morning!  To quote Brennan Huff from Step Brothers, “This time zone is horse shit!” If everything in the evening starts an hour later (e.g. reruns of The Big Bang Theory don’t start until 8 PM), then YOU SHOULDN’T HAVE TO GO TO WORK UNTIL 9 AM THE NEXT MORNING!!! But I digress…

I'm heading back to Iowa. By the time I get to the Myrtle Beach airport at 5 PM E-MF-ST, my tank is nearing empty. I actually fell asleep while leaning on my elbow sitting at a table and when I woke up, my elbow hurt really bad. Now I’m in an even worse mood; the perfect time to board an airplane.

Here’s some more backstory: I’m traveling with my good friend and colleague and, to protect his identity and privacy, I’ll give him a completely fake, made-up name. Let’s call him Kelvin Pattinson. Kelvin is one of the nicest people you’ll ever meet and he has a genuine love of children and enjoys interacting with them; in other words, my complete opposite in every regard.  As we take our seats, I notice a handsome young “youth-pastory”-looking couple seated directly in front of us with their beautiful, big-blue-eyed toddler (no doubt a future bearded hipster mega-church worship leader.) I’m immediately irritated as I begin to plan how to avoid any and all contact with this child.

This is NOT the future Youth Pastor...I found this annoying lil' fella on the Internets.

Here’s the crux of this blog: DON’T ENGAGE A CHILD ON AN AIRPLANE!!! EVER!!! For the love of god, people, you’ve got nowhere to go! So what does my esteemed colleague do? HE ENGAGES THE CHILD!!! He begins waving at the child and using “toddler talk”, which this kid eats up and immediately stands up, turns around, and latches on for full-flight interaction. I quickly lean my head against the window (thank god for window seats) and feign a deep sleep. To Kelvin’s credit, I hear him whisper to the child, “He’s taking a nap. He’s sleeping.” “That’s good, Kelvin…keep it up! Keep lying to this kid.” I think to myself.

The child finally turns around and things would’ve gone fairly smoothly from this point but for the rage-inducing little bastard in the seat directly behind me. He’s begun to emit what can only be described as intermittent “verbal explosions” which he augments with some sort of battering ram action against the back of my seat.  His favorite verbal explosion was “gibberish…gibberish…gibberish…DADDY! DADDY! DADDY! DADDY!” at a volume that the air traffic controllers on the ground were likely able to hear.  Daddy was nowhere to be found, just Mommy, who offered a calm and ineffective “Ssssshhh” when she saw me jerk my head from side-to-side in response to each verbal explosion. 

It's true...children are indeed awful.

As I contemplated the legal ramifications of inflicting physical harm on a child with 150 witnesses in close proximity, I noticed Kelvin laughing hysterically. He is aware of my feelings for the little ones and was really eating this up. Then Youth Pastor, Jr. turns around again for another interaction. Quickly back to sleep I go!  This went off and on for what thankfully was only an hour flight over to Atlanta. 

In an interesting bit of karma, as I walk off the plane, I drop my bag to the ground and it immediately starts to vibrate.  At first I thought the jet bridge was moving but as I walked into the terminal, the vibrating continued.  “What the hell could be vibrating in my bag?” I thought, as I was grateful I had cleared security without this happening.  I started to dig through it and it occurred to me, “My beard trimmer!”  Since our connecting flight was leaving in 30 minutes, I quickly plunged my hand into my bag to find the trimmer.  What I didn’t realize is that the guard had come off and, when I pulled my hand out, I was missing about a quarter-inch of skin on my finger and was bleeding like a stuck hog! Who knew they could trim hair OR be used for skin grafting? Oh karma, thou art a nasty bitch. Note to self: Be nicer to children.

My harrowing experience convinced me that if the Catholics are indeed correct and there is a purgatory, this will be mine. I’ll be stuck on an airplane full of inquisitive, shrieking children who will know that I am NOT sleeping in seat 12D and, instead of going to Atlanta, the flight will go on for eternity. (Insert "Atlanta is basically Hell anyway" joke here.)

Now I know what you’re thinking: What kind of depraved monster could hold in his blackened heart such loathing for God’s most innocent creatures?  The answer: anyone who has sat between two of those angelic lil’ creatures on a flying tube bound for Hell.  

Thanks for stopping by...

Travis

The Salieri Complex: My Life of Mediocrity

Do you ever have those moments where you read or hear something that perfectly encapsulates your current position in life? I recently stumbled across an unofficial psychological syndrome called “The Salieri Complex” – named for Antonio Salieri, the late-18th century Italian composer known for his rivalry with Mozart. This relationship was the basis for the 1984 film Amadeus in which Salieri, from an insane asylum, confesses to a priest the tale of how he was ultimately responsible for Mozart’s death. Incidentally, I hold Amadeus in the same regard as The Deer Hunter: if you haven’t seen it, you’re a loser (see my Jan. 24th entry.)

In the movie, Salieri, himself a confident court composer who has given his life to God as an offering in return for the musical talent God has bestowed upon him, becomes acquainted with Mozart. He eventually finds himself competing with Mozart and becoming envious of Mozart’s talent.  When confronted with the effortless genius of Mozart, Salieri sadly realizes that he is doomed to a life of mediocrity and, in a cathartic final scene, counsels the emotionally exhausted priest, with whom he has been sharing his story:

“I will speak for you, Father; I speak for all mediocrities in the world. I am their champion; I am their patron saint.”

Then, as he is wheeled down a corridor filled with mental patients, some chained to the wall or in cages, he joyfully proselytizes and offers absolution to his flock of lunatics:

“Mediocrity is everywhere. I absolve you. I absolve you. I absolve you all.”

Salieri has fully accepted his mediocrity and that of all those around him.

I stumbled across the Salieri Complex in a review written by Dan Zak of the Washington Post about Alec Baldwin’s new book, Nevertheless. As he closes, he disappointingly asks of Baldwin, “What about your relationship with God…and let’s address your Salieri complex head-on.” He follows with a line that slapped me right in the face: “How do you do meaningful work when you’re smart enough to know you’re not good enough?”

In a nutshell, those of us afflicted with the Salieri Complex always feel there is someone much better at what we do than we are.

This is a great segue into the whole Dunning-Kruger effect which states that incompetent people overestimate their own skill level and lack the self-awareness to realize their mistake. In other words, you’re too incompetent to know you’re incompetent. There are scads of articles out there now that delve into this fascinating topic, most of them apply to a certain segment of Trump supporters. If you’re one of them, go ahead and read it anyway; you probably won’t know it’s about you.

Anyway, this Salieri Complex hit me head on because I immediately realized it perfectly encapsulates my musical life: it has since I was in college. I went to a small, liberal arts school where I blossomed from an acne-ridden fat kid with zero confidence into what I thought was a pretty damn good bassist with little-to-no acne and a svelte figure...a veritable stud-muffin as the girls would say (see below.) I was the classic “big fish in a little pond” but, as Mr. Dunning and Mr. Kruger would’ve told me had I been one of their lab rats, I was too dumb to know it at the time.

That's me, the stud-muffin on the left, with a couple of my college jazz band buddies.

Let’s fast-forward 20-something years to the recent past. In spite of the efforts of Mr. Dunning and Mr. Kruger, I had fallen into another incompetent haze where I felt like I was a bass player extraordinaire and was playing with a hot band, you know, kickin’ ass and takin’ names as the kids say nowadays.

But hang on there just a minute, Guiseppe! Now we have Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and a host of other social shit-shows that hold our attention like a bad haircut with a red tie. I follow many Instagram accounts of talented bass players from around the world who seem to be normal people like me and they routinely post video clips of themselves playing some killer bass grooves. It’s hugely entertaining but at the same time, I found that constantly watching players who are technically better than me was wearing me down. I even tried posting my own video of me “kickin’ it with a tasty groove” but removed it after deciding that is was not even close to what I usually saw on IG (that’s Instagram for all you uncool people out there.)

Then I read Mr. Zak’s aforementioned article and did a self-diagnosis: the Salieri Complex! It all became crystal clear. How do I create meaningful (i.e. impressive) work bass videos when I’m smart enough to know I’m not good enough? Answer: I can’t. I must admit though, that like Salieri, I found a certain peace when I came to grips with my own mediocrity. The complex has even become manifest in the basses I obtain. I didn’t buy a Music Man Stingray bass for $2000 or the Jaco Fender Jazz fretless bass for $1800; I bought the less-expensive knock-off brands because, in my head, I wasn’t good enough to “deserve” the top-of-the-line. Finally, it all makes sense.  

Do I write this to elicit sympathy or petty encouragement from you, my valued reader? No. I have a pretty good life and I’m a decent bassist in a pretty damn good band (that's now taking bookings for fall) with some awesome guys. Do I write this cathartically to purge myself of any Dunning/Kruger-esque ignorance or delusion? No. I am acutely aware of my short-comings as a musician and, to a lesser degree, as a person. An insane person doesn’t know he’s insane but I know that I am mediocre. My, my, self-actualization feels nice!

Lastly, as I’m wheeled down the corridor of my insane asylum (that’s just a metaphor for life, Holmes, not a literal reflection of my home life), I look at you, dear reader, and offer you tender absolution from your mediocrity, should there be any in your life. Acknowledge it. Embrace it. Learn from it and remember, there can be no excellence without mediocrity. The world NEEDS us.

I absolve you. 

Travis