Tiger Tales

The Safety Trance

Forget kids’ tv shows, says NEIL HUMPHREYS, the only inflight entertainment his daughter will settle for is a flight attendant

Until I took our daughter on her first flight, it seemed that only one spectacle could keep her quiet: Teletubbies. Those colourful TV aliens are mesmerising for a 13-month-old.

Nothing else came close. My wife and I once dressed up in luminous costumes, but we ended up looking like escaped prisoners. Attempts at incoherent speech didn’t work either. Her grandfather speaks that way every Sunday after a few beers and she doesn’t pay the least attention. No, there was something captivating about Teletubbies, an elusive quality no one else possessed. Except flight attendants

Maybe it’s the uniforms or the energetic hand signals, but flight attendants and Teletubbies just do it for her. It’s the pre-flight safety check that started it all. On a flight out of Melbourne, we were seated where the oxygen mask/life jacket/front-and-rear exit talk is given. My daughter thought the show was better than Barney.

There was no indication ahead of time that our daughter was going to pay any attention. She was too preoccupied with chomping down on the sick bag and the inflight magazine. When our petite piranha moved on to the safety card, the saintly flight attendant had to coax it out of my daughter’s clenched teeth, drawing a look that said: “Try that again, lady, and you’ll lose a finger.”

But when the flight attendant pulled on the yellow life jacket, my daughter’s jaw dropped, which was handy because I was able to remove a piece of the sick bag from her hard palate.

She proceeded to show off the life jacket’s torch and mimed blowing the whistle. My daughter giggled and I considered stuffing one of the life jackets into my hand luggage. When she pointed out the exit doors, my little one giggled again and I considered stuffing the flight attendant in there, too.

By the time she finished demonstrating how to use the oxygen mask, I half expected my daughter to throw red roses into the aisle. Instead, she threw a fit. She wept. Not loudly, but a gentle, dignified sobbing that comes with a sense of loss.

We’ve tried everything to ease the pain ever since: I’ve pointed out the front and rear exits in our living room. My wife has worn bright yellow clothing, pulled on masks and blown whistles, but it’s no good. It has to be that yellow, that mask and that whistle.

Fortunately, we’re taking another flight out of Melbourne shortly. Our daughter is treating the flight like a trip to Disneyland. She has already watched just about every episode of Teletubbies, so it had better work.

If it doesn’t, I’m out of options. Can you hire flight attendants for children’s parties?

NEIL HUMPHREYS WRITES FOR PUBLICATIONS IN SINGAPORE AND AUSTRALIA AND HIS LATEST INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER, BE MY BABY, IS OUT NOW. VISIT www.NEILHUMPHREYS.NE