Airline Passenger Asked To Babysit 2 Kids Sitting Next To Her Is Amused By Their Endless Questions — ‘Their Curiosity Was So Refreshing’
Most of us would have found this intolerable. But she found it endearing.
FamVeld | Shutterstock For many of us, there's nothing worse than being seated next to kids on an airplane. There's always a huge chance that they'll spend the entire flight screaming, squirming, running around, and generally wreaking havoc.
On a recent flight, one woman found herself in many passengers' worst-case scenario — wedged beside two unaccompanied minors. However, it ended up going in a direction she didn't expect.
The airline passenger was asked to watch the 2 unaccompanied kids seated beside her.
Moe Odele is an avid traveler from Nigeria who chronicles her life as a globe-trotting digital nomad on her YouTube channel. In a thread on X, she described the rather odd situation she found herself in on one of her most recent trips.
As she settled into her seat, a flight attendant asked her to keep her eye on the two children, ages 8 and 12, seated beside her who were traveling alone. "The plan was to hand them over to ground staff," she wrote.
Odele reluctantly agreed — and the kids quickly began peppering her with non-stop questions.
Odele admitted that she's not particularly fond of kids — not that she doesn't like them, but " I usually won’t go out of my way to interact with a stranger’s child." She agreed to help out anyway, figuring she'd sleep through the flight and keep to herself.
The kids, however, had a very different idea! "How wrong I was," Odele wrote.
Just as they were about to take off, the 8-year-old tapped her on the shoulder and asked her to take him to the bathroom. When she explained that they had to wait until the seatbelt sign was off, a flurry of questions began about the bathroom — like where the toilet water goes (valid question!)
Then the kids started asking about everything else pertaining to flying — about what the pilot can and cannot see from the cockpit, about how long their trip would take by car, and perhaps most importantly, "Do clouds die?" (Man, that is DEEP!)
Odele found the encounter not annoying, but 'refreshing'.
Most of us are probably groaning in commiseration with Odele at the idea of having to be two strange kids' personal Google. However, she couldn't help but be sort of charmed by the kids. "I ended up really enjoying my time with them," she wrote. "Their curiosity was so refreshing."
It gave her a new appreciation for the work of parenting. As she put it in another tweet, "For parents that do this everyday… What happens when you don’t know the answer to the questions?"
Of course, after Odele's thread went viral, many people had to make it weird by scolding the airline for handling this inappropriately (not that they don't perhaps have a point). But Odele countered that in Nigeria, this sort of community-focused dynamic is the order of the day, so much so that she didn't really think much of the request.
I couldn't help but think of my own childhood experiences like this while reading Odele's thread. The kid of divorced Boomers, I was shoved on planes by myself between my parents' Detroit and Chicago homes starting at age 5 — which looking back seems absolutely insane.
At first, it really scared me, and I vividly remember how much the look of visible annoyance on the face of the businessman beside me on that first flight made me feel even more vulnerable.
When it came time to have a drink, though, he begrudgingly jumped in, showing me how to open my tray table and helping me tell the flight attendant what I wanted to drink (apple juice, obviously). When the flight attendant reminded me about the Oreos my dad had sent with me in my backpack, I of course shared them with him, like something out of a sappy commercial.
He made me feel okay for the 90 or so minutes of that flight (which felt like an eternity to a 5-year-old), and that to me is the point of Odele's story. These kinds of moments often make a difference that we might not expect or realize.
Her reflex to reach toward community rather than turn away from it — which I must admit would have been my own instinct in this situation — is an important lesson, especially nowadays. We're quite literally evolutionarily wired to both need and help each other. Imagine how things might change if we all started following those hardwired instincts again.
John Sundholm is a writer, editor, and video personality with 20 years of experience in media and entertainment. He covers culture, mental health, and human interest topics.