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As mentioned in my first post, Dash traveled 21 hours on his first flight when he came home from South Korea. In the greater scheme of things, it went pretty well with a minimum of fuss on his part, especially because we’d had him less than a day and hardly knew the guy. Since then the kid has logged in more air miles in the last year and a half than I had into my mid-20s. He’s rarely cried for more than a minute or two on any given flight, and that usually was attributable to the change in cabin pressure during take off or landing.

So last Saturday I was pretty sure things would be fine even if we did have to fly out of Kennedy, which can be a real slog to get to if traffic is bad — and traffic is almost always bad. Not on this day though. We made it to the airport with enough time for a meal before the flight. The first leg from JFK to Minneapolis/St. Paul went without a hitch. As did the time between our connection where Dash was able to run around a relatively empty gate area for about 45 minutes.

Then we boarded our second flight. As soon as we put a safety belt on Dash he started screaming. Not a DEFCON 1 the world is ending kind of scream, but it was pretty insistent. As the parent across the aisle, I was thinking people were probably hating us but so what. My wife was in the seat next to him and was wrestling with him to keep him buckled in as he screamed. Then the Delta fembot posing as a flight attendant came over to see what was going on. Dash has been wrestling with a cold, and he was coughing as he cried.

My wife in a futile attempt to gain sympathy told the fembot that he’d had a fever that had just broke that morning and he was a little sick — the fever part was news to me, and my wife is prone to exaggeration to augment her case when someone gets in her face. All the fembot heard was FEVER and handed Kathy barf bags before stomping off to tell the captain, who immediately stopped the plane, which had been taxi-ing out to the runway. I sat and watched as the fembot talked on the phone with the captain, seemingly giving a blow by blow of the mother and son wrestling. The other flight attendant came by with cookies hoping that these would diffuse the matter, but it didn’t.

The fembot returns to inform us that if the child is truly sick we need to get off the plane immediately because the captain doesn’t want to make an emergency landing for a medical issue. She’s saying this loud enough for people in several rows in either direction to hear. Now people are really starting to hate us. The fembot stomps off again.

Suddenly out of nowhere another passenger who apparently was a Girl Scout leader and her four-year-old son appeared next to us with a handful of Girl Scout cookies. Just as I was about to say, “That’s not going to work,” Dash stopped crying. Swear to God. He’d never seen a Girl Scout cookie before and doesn’t get cookies at home, but there must be something in all children’s DNA about Girl Scout Cookies. It was the kid’s idea, and no doubt he knew this.

Rather than being happy to see that the child had been calmed, the fembot went into a tizzy about people getting out of their seat, making an announcement over the PA that “People need to stay in their seat even if there is a crying baby” and then said something vaguely insulting about my wife’s ability as a mother. It was then after one more check on the now quiet kid, she told the captain that all the drama had been resolved. So the plane soon took off and Dash ate about five cookies and was wired on sugar for the rest of the flight, nevermind that it was 11:30 pm EDT when we departed. Arriving 90 minutes later in Billings, Montana, Dash finally crashed as soon as he hit the rental car car seat.

Long story short: we made it. Next installment will hopefully be about Dash’s first time on skis.