Talking Toddlers and our Incapacity to Reason

A mother and her 19 month old child were kicked off a commuter jet because the child constantly stated, "Bye Bye Plane" for over a half an hour during the safety instructions and taxi of the turboprop.

http://abclocal.go.com/ktrk/story?section=local&id=5472927

Now I might understand if the little kid was warning everyone about a terrorist plot to blow up the plane (I mean obviously in these post 9/11 days, anyone saying "Bye Bye Plane" while on the plane must be trying to blow it up and you know that these Al-Qaeda people are getting younger and younger all the time).

That apparently isn't how it went down. The flight attendant apparently asked that the child be given Benedryl to quiet the kid whose noise level was about the same as a normal conversation. Great, if it were a terrorist plot, that ensures that the co-conspirator won't be able to tell us where the bomb is because he would be too sleepy!

In any case, the situation escalated and the kid and mom were asked to deplane simply because the kid couldn't stop uttering the same phrase over and over again and it made the flight attendant upset.

So now you can be kicked off a plane because you can't get a toddler to shut up. Have you ever tried to silence a 19 month old? If this flight attendant represents our first line of defense against terrorism, our capacity for reason appears to be on a par with that toddler. For me, that's almost as scary as the possibility of another terrorist plot.