Memorandum

To: The family seated in row 20 of Delta flight 97 JFK-SLC
From: Sorro
CC: Two Guys from Quantico
Re: Your behavior on 6/22/08

I hate to be the one to throw the first stone, but after the experience I had while sitting behind you last night, I'm grabbing a boulder and tossing it your direction. Your kids were awful on that flight. When I say awful, I don't mean that they were a little fussy. I mean that they were obnoxious. If they were 2, some of their behavior would be justified. The problem here is that they appeared to be around 8, 6, 4, and 1. The 1 year old was fantastic. I can't say anything else about her. Your 6 year old son appeared to be hacking up a lung and I just heard "cover your mouth" from you. People cough and can't help it, so I'll give you a pass, although 2 weeks from now I expect everyone who was on that flight to be sick. I don't blame them for their actions. Instead, I place the blame squarely on your shoulders. Why there instead of with the kids? Allow me to list what I saw that told me you two were not candidates for parent of the year.
First, the obnoxious whining of your 8 and 4 year olds. If they were actually saying something, this could be excused. Instead, they said something like this: "ehhhhhhhhhhh." Kids should be raised a bit better than that. My 2 year old didn't give me an ehh for 18 hours: 10 from Venice to Kennedy, 2 at Kennedy, 2 on the tarmac waiting for takeoff at Kennedy, and 4 to Salt Lake. If she can do it, I'm pretty sure they can do it to. What did I hear from you? Not one thing. You both sat there in your aisle seats and watched TV. Bravo sir and madam, bravo.

Second, I have to give your wife some sort of credit for noticing that I am indeed 6'4" and that if you kicked your seat back, I'd be in a world of hurt. To your discredit, you promptly did exactly that.

Thirdly, you should probably not lay down for a nap across 3 seats when 2 of those are occupied by your children. It's just one of those common courtesy situations. I don't do it to a stranger or their children, why in the world would I screw my kids like that. It's one more reason why they were clearly more harried than they should have been.

Finally, when a child throws up, you clean it up. There are few things more disgusting than vomit. Yet when one of your children did lose their dinner all over, what did you do? Apparently not much. You didn't notice it coming on to get it into one of those courtesy barf bags the airlines have been using for over 50 years, and so it ended up on the floor. How do I know this? Because I saw your pathetic attempt at cleanup when you left: 2 cocktail napkins. Did you bother to call the FA and ask for some help? Did you think that maybe those around you would have to smell it for the next 2 hours and wonder where it was? Did you think that maybe then the wife of someone who was sitting behind you might put her shoes on to leave the flight and then find that your child managed to toss most of his or her cookies right into her shoe? That's right - your child threw up in my wife's shoe, and then you acted as though nothing had happened when she disgustedly removed her soggy shoe and loudly proclaimed that there was indeed vomit in her shoe.
I wish you a Ryanair flight, middle seat, last row, surrounded by nothing but unruly 10 year olds headed to a Nickelodeon cruise. May you enjoy Frequent Flyer Purgatory.