Photo: Pexels / Kelly
The third kick was his final strike.
By Taylor Haynes — Written on Dec 12, 2022
The worst element when it comes to flying with airlines is having to deal with kids that are not yours. What especially makes it so maddening is that you can’t escape, you must endure any disruptions to your day.
One man took to Reddit’s “Am I the A–Hole?” forum to express his frustrations while flying one day. He wanted to find out if he was wrong for yelling at a mother to control her children.
“Am I the A–hole?” is a place where people can write about conflict in their lives.
He thought he was going to have a peaceful plane ride. He was wrong.
The 39-year-old began the post by revealing that he was on a flight from New York to London.
His seat was in front of a woman and her two young sons, while her husband sat behind them.
He notes that it is important to recognize the family is Indian, and he is American-Indian.
So the plane takes off and the boys “start yelling about how this is the best day ever,”,but the man in front of them just tunes them out with his headphones.
Eventually, he felt something “digging” into his back, and he turned around to see that the young boy had his feet “jammed” into the seat.
He asked the mother if she could tell her son not to sit that way, and she did.
The young boy was not done kicking his seat.
An hour later, the man felt some more movement at his back seat so, once again, he asked the mother to correct her son.
She did so, but not without some rolling of the eyes.
It is understandable that the mother was irritated, as she had to deal with her children causing a racket on the plane.
The third time that the man felt something on his back was the last straw. He turned around yelled at the woman in Hindi:
“Are you from a village?! Have you never flown before?! Please discipline your children and tell them to stop messing with my seat!”
“People like you give Indian travelers a bad name, and that is why people don't like travelling with us!"
The woman's husband finally notices the situation and asks in English “what is going on?” and he told him that his kids were making a fuss behind his seat.
The husband spoke “harshly” to his kids, which earned the man an angry look from the wife.
Harsh words paid off though because the children did not bother him for the rest of the flight.
When he got home, he spoke to his mother on the phone and she chastised him, and told him that what he said wasn’t “very nice”.
He is starting to rethink his actions.
Apparently, the man was getting negative comments because he edited the post and added: “A lot of people are calling me classist by asking the family if they are from a village.”
“This family was definitely not from a village. I used the world 'gaonwalon,' which does literally translate to villagers,”
He also revealed that “stereotypes aren't great, but they are based on something. Indians are not looked upon well by other travelers.”
“Sometimes it's racism, but there are a set of behaviors that are more frequent amongst Indians than others,” he explains.
“I've spent a lot of time in India and elsewhere, and Indian kids are by far the most out of control, and this is often due to their parents being totally checked out and not paying attention to their kids.”
“You did what you had to do to get them to stop messing with your chair. The results speak for themselves,” said one user.
Another commented “You handled the situation pretty well considering you asked the mother multiple times to get her kids under control. Your comments were kinda mean however, were warranted considering the stress and frustration caused by this”.
“Are you from a village is no worse than were you born in a barn. It's a colloquial expression. NTA [not the A–hole],” said a third.
Taylor Haynes is a writer based in Chicago. She writes for Entertainment & News at YourTango. You can find her on Instagram here.