Planes and Babies

I am sitting on the return flight from Milan-Malpensa to London Gatwick. Three rows behind me there is a baby screaming. Loudly. The screaming began when the plane boarded and now, one hour into the flight, even the most saintly passengers are beginning to look pained. The baby has two distinct screams. A loud and rhythmic WAH WAH WAH and a high-pitched, drawn out EEEEEEEEK. This has also set off several other babies, cleverly placed at different parts of the plane for maximum coverage.

Now, I do realise that there are some things that you just can’t say and some you shouldn’t even think. But consider this. Research (probably) shows that the screaming of a baby is the most stressful sound to the human ear. A quick flick through Charlie Darwin’s books will tell you that the reason for this is evolution. The baby has spent millions of years deliberately developing a really annoying sound so that Mommy and Daddy could hear it from the back of the cave and come running to check it wasn’t being eaten by dinosaurs. We agree then, that it isn’t politically incorrect to state that the sound of a crying baby is irksome. If prolonged, and new mothers would agree with me, it is actually tortuous.

In fact, if I deliberately played tapes of screaming babies for hours on end to a prisoner of war, someone in Geneva would probably get very upset. Forcing someone to listen to endless screaming in a confined space is therefore tantamount to torture if:

1. they are not free to exit from the area;

2. it isn’t self-inflicted (i.e. they haven’t introduced the source of the screaming themselves).

I ponder this for a few minutes. I am currently strapped into a seat in a confined space. I obviously can’t exit. I certainly haven’t chosen to have kids myself, and therefore the source of the screaming is not of my doing. I worry that I am being tortured, or, as the Americans would say, subject to enhanced interrogation techniques.

I shift in my seat to see if I can spot the baby ringleader. I spot him and see that he doesn’t even have tears in his eyes. These are attention screams not, ‘Help there is a dinosaur!’ screams. His mother is holding him on her lap with her face set in an unexpectedly peaceful expression. I notice, with horror, that she is wearing earphones.

‘Look!’ I prod my wife, ‘She’s got noise cancelling earphones! Surely she should be enjoying her baby’s dulcet tones?’

My wife, who is calmly reading a book, has a quick peek over her headrest.

‘I think you are being intolerant,’ she sighs, confidently turning a page, ‘and babies are necessary for the continued survival of the species, so you have to expect them on planes.’

‘But we don’t have noise cancelling headphones,’ I hiss, ‘and this is obviously not the first time her kid has screamed forever, so really she should have brought enough for the rest of us. Or at least take hers out in a gesture of solidarity!’

I stew on this for some time. Headphone mother doesn’t seem to care that her kid is screaming. I wonder what would happen if I started to scream and how long it would be before someone told me to shut up.

‘Is it ok to tell other people’s babies to shut up?’ I prod my wife again.

She is ignoring me.

‘Not ok.’ I concede.

I consider writing a note to the airline to ask them to investigate the feasibility of placing all passengers with babies in a special soundproofed section. It will never work, I realise. Where would it end? Special sections for people with pungent feet or dull conversation or the need to pee every two minutes? There will be no end to the special sections.

I look around fearfully, wondering what special section I would be put in. I lock eyes with the headphone mother. She smiles and, grateful for a friendly face, I smile back. Sometimes, I conclude wisely, things are probably better just the way they are.

Torture

Mankind has a long and murky history of not being very nice to itself. At one point there were entire industries and professions built around how to inflict the maximum amount of suffering on the human body. Tipping my hat to our dark past, I have gathered together what I believe to be the four most heinous and odious torture devices from the damp shadows of bygone eras:

1. Persians: ‘Throw them to the ashes!’ is a phrase that appears often in ancient Persian manuscripts but has baffled historians for quite some time. Luckily for us, a clever German man named Bruno has recently solved the conundrum. He reckons that the Persians would place a thick layer of ash on the floor of a room and then lock someone in it. The person would have to remain standing, otherwise they would start to inhale the ash. Inevitably, the victim would eventually collapse from exhaustion and inhale the ash. This would lead to a slow and painful suffocation. You can read about it in a Spiegel article here. Very creative.

2. More Persians: The Tub is also mentioned in the Spiegel article above - it is far too disturbing for me to repeat, but is perhaps the most dastardly torture on this list. Something was clearly very wrong with the Ancient Persians.

3. Greeks: A nasty little man called Perillos invented the Brazen Bull as a novel method of execution. It was a hollow, bronze bull that a person could fit inside alongside an elaborate system of bellows, tubes and horns. A fire would be lit under the bull and the person within would slowly roast. The bellows would convert their screams into the sound of an enraged bull and smoke would blow through the bull’s nose. A deeply unnecessary illusion! However, the pixies of karma obviously have a black sense of humour, as when Perillos proposed his lovely device to the ruler of Athens, Perillos was given the honour of being the first to test it out. Lesson: don’t invent torture devices! Sinister stuff.

4. Europeans: The Pear of Anguish was used by the medieval Europeans. Great name. It seems to have been a fairly popular way to dispatch witches, homosexuals, blasphemers and liars. It was a metal device shaped like a pear that would expand and blossom once it was shoved somewhere terribly unpleasant (I think you get the general idea). And, just in case an interruption (what is the correct collective noun here?) of academics descends on me, I should point out that this torture device might only have existed in the minds of twisted medieval writers. Alas, the dangers of fiction.

On that macabre note, have a fun weekend!