You are now free to wake up the baby

On Friday Penny took her first airplane ride, transcontinental to boot. With much anticipation we planned this journey. We chose an outfit that made changing easy; she wore socks that don’t fall off. We arrived at the terminal well in advance. And Penny did just fine…she slept during boarding and takeoff and didn’t seem bothered by the bumpy acceleration.

[Sidebar: training your child for a bumpy flight. Step 1, purchase a Mini Cooper S shortly before you discover you are about to have a child. Step 2, transport the child solely in the Mini from in utero through birth. Step 3, be sure to choose routes through the District of Columbia that haven’t seen resurfacing in lo these many years.]

So there we were, ensconced in seats 26B and C, with Penny blissfully unaware that she was hurtling at somewhere just under mach 1 to visit her grandparents, aunt, uncle, cousin, and various other relatives and associates in California. We started to think, “maybe this won’t be so bad, maybe she’ll even sleep through the whole thing!” Until the cabin speakers leapt into action, following a loud “Bing!” with, “Thank you for choosing American Airlines, soon we will reach our cruising altitude of 36,000 feet. We will begin our inflight beverage service as soon as the captain removes the seat belt sign...” and so on, and so on.

They had Penny at the Bing.

The rest of the flight continued in a similar vein – Penny would fall asleep, they would make an announcement and wake her up. This is not to say that she didn’t do a great job. In fact, she acquitted herself perfectly, with only one grumpy period during which mom and dad were interminably boring.

If Samuel Jackson had been sitting in 26A, he probably would have surmised, "I’m sick and tired of these [BING!] announcements on this [BING!] plane!”