Travel Insecurities
Our son, Anakin, used to hate airport security. At four years old he formed fierce attachments. They made flushing poop away difficult, letting water out of the tub difficult, disposing of broken toys or random snips of paper difficult, and, as we learned at the outset of a month of air travel to and within Thailand, removing his shoes and giving up his belongings to an x-ray machine nothing short of abject torture.
His grandfather, a retired child psychologist, reported these attachments were “primal.” They were not going to be reasoned or disciplined away. Naturally, therefore, we resorted to bribery: the cookies and DVDs he would enjoy just beyond the security check point. And in desperation the bribery became consequences: the lack of DVDs and cookies he would suffer if it ever went THAT way again.
Yes, this was the worst part of our dream vacation. For while I had meticulously planned our trip to quell the tantrum tendency of our otherwise adventure-loving child, I could not, I discovered, fully dictate his passions. Yes, he loved riding tuk-tuks, long tail boats, and two-ton elephants. He also happily tunneled caves, knelt in temples, and poured over This is My Faith: Buddhism. Even the itinerary book I made for him—complete with maps, calendar and check off boxes—was dog-eared by our trip’s end. But those quick jet flights, those affordable tickets I’d booked in place of overnight buses and trains (which I’d considered my greatest strategic accomplishment for traveling with a preschooler) proved to be our Achilles heel.
Which is why I have been meaning to write the following:
A Formal Letter of Apology to the Country of Thailand
Thank you for your recent hospitality accommodating our four-year-old son within the ordinarily ample boarders of your beautiful and soft-spoken country. Your people displayed the kind of grace and tolerance that others, including my small child, could clearly learn from. We are sorry that we gave you no advance warning that your nation’s people would be called on to serve as his instructors. We know the limestone peaks of Chiang Dao, the medieval walls of Chiang Mai, the markets of Bangkok, and the white sands of Koh Lanta are still reverberating with our presence. We ask, humbly, for your forgiveness and that you see our blonde-headed, white-skinned, unusually tall for his age child (really he is only four!), not as a foundational cause of our nation’s aggressive tendencies, but rather as one off-kilter overly-passionate boy whose mommies have as yet failed to fully comprehend just what makes him tick or… as the case may be … ticked off.
Thank you for your kind looks of concern as Anakin approached Nok Air security check points. Thank you for violating your own airport policies and allowing him to keep the rolling baggage cart beyond the check point once you saw that Genghis Kahn couldn’t take it away. Thank you for blinking demurely and never raising your voice as you repeated your company’s policy that each item must be placed on a tray, including the stuffed opossum (Polly) that resembles no creature within your borders, prior to being swallowed by the horrible mouth of the x-ray security machine. Thank you for refraining from lecturing us or engaging us in any way as Anakin exploded into a human weather system—worthy of our nation’s plains—complete with thunder, lightening, twisters, and near physical devastation. I can hear you protesting, No, no, he is just a baby, not so bad! And while it is true he did not actually spit at the four Buddhist monks he raged in front of as he pushed and punched his parents all over the airport, and he did only hit the older woman’s shin with his errant shoe, we do feel that your patience went above and beyond what the average host nation should be expected to provide. Frankly, imprisonment or forced deportation would have been understandable.
But probably you saw that would require our crossing yet another security check point.
Our return flight home went smoothly thanks to a Swedish psychologist we met on the beach in Koh Lanta. She suggested Anakin get to see his opossum toy on the screen of the x-ray machines. Thankfully the security officers accommodated him and, as she’d predicted, his curiosity overpowered his anxiety.
©2010 Eliza J. Anderson
[Photo: Flickr member redjar, licensed for use under Creative Commons License Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic]
