D4| Saturday/Sunday, March 7 - 8, 2020 **** THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.
TRAVELER’S TALE/ROY WOOD JR. ON HOW FLYING WITH HIS SON HAS CHANGED HIS OUTLOOK
Aloft With My Toddler, the
Happy Road Warrior
I DIDN’T FLYmuch as a child. I
spent more time in the back seat of
my father’s Lincoln Continental as
we whisked up and down the free-
way from Birmingham, Ala., where
we lived, to visit family in Chicago
and Atlanta. The bulk of my travel-
ing back then was reserved to the
monotony of that back seat, the oc-
casional Amtrak and quite often, the
Greyhound bus.
I flew commercial maybe two to
three times in elementary school.
But then when I was in fourth grade
or so, my father had a speaking en-
gagement at Disney World Epcot
Center and the company flew us pri-
vate. I’d flown so little I didn’t real-
ize how amazing it was to fly pri-
vate. I wouldn’t set foot on an
airplane again until my high-school
senior trip to Cancún, on a now-de-
funct budget airline. (After flyingprivate, it was a crushing disap-
pointment. We barely got sodas.) All
in all before I left Birmingham for
college, I estimate I flew half a
dozen times, at most.
My 3-year-old son is a Delta Sil-
ver Medallion Member. He missed
Gold status this year by one flight.
My girlfriend, son and I live in
New York. One set of grandparents
are in Oakland, Calif., and the other
are in Alabama, so it’s easy for us to
rack up the SkyMiles. At the end of
some flights, my kid gets the con-
gratulatory “Well, weren’t you a
good little boy,” from a fellow pas-
senger. What it feels like they’re
saying is “I thought you were going
to be a demon the entire flight, but I
was pleasantly surprised, and I was
able to get some sleep.”
Admittedly, not many parents rel-
ish the thought of flying with theirtoddlers. Luckily, my son’s curiosi-
ties outweigh his desire to throw a
tantrum. He’s even graduated to
striking up conversations with the
strangers sitting next to us.
Needless to say, we’ve had two
entirely different experiences in our
introduction to travel.
He’s had enough trips to the cock-
pit that he can now identify the
throttle, rudder pedals and many
other instruments. He has a prefer-
ence on the window shade. Up for
take off, down for midflight and up
again at landing.
There’s a purity we lose over
years and years of flying. Years
and years of TSA pat downs and of
flight delays deflate that initial
sense of wonder. If you look
around an airport on an average
day, the only people enjoying
themselves are children. (Maybeit’s also because they don’t pay for
anything.) Before I had a kid, pass-
ing through the airport was a te-
dious, mundane necessity. Now it’s
full of questions and analysis.
If we’re flying through Atlanta’s
Hartsfield-Jackson, I budget an ex-
tra 30 minutes of time just so my
son can ride the Plane Train that
runs between the concourses. When
on an airport monorail, he insists on
riding in the first car or the last car,
so he can see the mechanics of the
track. The AirTrain that runs out-
side of JFK and Newark is another
favorite, as is the train at Detroit
Metro, which runs inside the termi-
nal offering a unique bird’s-eye view
of the concourse’s interior.
For me, the best part of flying is
the Biscoff cookie. Not the individual
seat-back entertainment. Not the
advent of lie-flat seats. Nope. TheLotus Biscoff cookie. With an odd
cinnamon flavor, it’s as if a ginger
snap had a child with a graham
cracker. Every now and then on a
Delta flight, I’ll grab an extra packet
of Biscoffs to keep for later. I’ve
never seen them in a store and to
order Biscoffs online requires you to
order them in quantities so large
you’re basically a distributor.
Last year, in the middle of a lazy
Sunday at home, and what I call a
snack drought—the grocery provi-
sions were sorely lacking—I decided
to do something most fathers would
never do for their children: I went
into my Biscoff stash. I had hidden
the cookies away in the side com-
partment of my laptop bag. I offeredmy son a Biscoff. He stared at it, and
politely handed it back to me and
simply said, “No daddy, those are for
the airplane.” I ate the cookies in
front of him and I have to say my
son is correct, Biscoffs taste differ-
ent on the ground.
United Airlines announced re-
cently that it will be alternating be-
tween the Biscoff cookie and Oreo
Thins. It sounds crazy, but the lack
of Biscoff consistency on United
will weigh heavily in my decision
about which carrier to choose
when I’m flying with my son. I
might have to just go in my stash,
then palm a Biscoff to the flight at-
tendant to “give” to my son. But do
you really want to lie to your child
about that?
Even at 3—even after all those
flights—he understands how spe-
cial travel can be. I went to col-
lege at Florida A&M University
and it wasn’t uncommon for me to
meet people in Miami who had
never been to the beach. They’d
lived in Miami their entire lives
and had never seen the ocean. For
some, traveling just a few miles
from their home is a journey too
far, a journey too improbable.
Now, with every trip I take with
my son, I’m reminded how much
of gift it is to experience travel
and to see the world with such
relative ease. And that it is indeed
something worth savoring.
I’ve resisted the temptation to
use the SkyMiles that my son has
accumulated thus far. I’ve opted to
let the miles add up over the years
like a stock. When he’s 18, he’ll have
plenty of miles to travel the world,
ride in all the airport trains he can
find and eat unlimited Biscoffs.Stand-up comedian Roy Wood Jr.
is a correspondent on “The
Daily Show with Trevor Noah”
and the host of the Comedy
Central’s storytelling series, “This
is Not Happening.”My 3-year-old son
is a Delta Silver
Medallion member.
He only missed Gold
status by one flight.FABIO CONSOLI
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