Licking Armrests

I was flying yesterday and ended up reminiscing about all of the times my wife and I flew with little kids. There were lots and lots of babies in the airport so it was easy to get all misty eyed remembering the fun we had. I've got several stories about flying, but one always pops into my head when I'm sitting in the rows of seats in the waiting for the plane to board.
This was back when we only had one solitary child, and we were flying home for Christmas. She was about 10 months old and like all kids her age, she thought her mouth was a primary sensory organ. All exploration involved either placing the object in her mouth, or if the object was too big to be moved, chewing, gnawing, or generally licking it. We all have to deal with this with our kids. Every object needs to be analyzed for it's appropriateness for mouth exploration. Is it so small that it will be swallowed? Will they attempt to swallow it thinking that perhaps they're a python and instead choke on it? Will they fit it in their mouth and carry it around all day like a chipmunk? Is the object clean? Or even clean-ish? Just as there's a continuity of size, there is a continuity of clean. It ranges from a freshly washed teething toy to a truck stop urinal. Everything falls somewhere along that line and as a parent you often have to make snap decisions about what's appropriate. Most of your toys are on the good list. Chew on them like you're a terrier. Things outside in nature are probably ok from a germ perspective, but chewing on rocks and sticks presents other hazards, so they're probably not so good. Animals are on the no go list, but that situation seems to be naturally self correcting. The handle of the shopping cart? I'd rather they didn't but acknowledge that the likelihood of them contracting a serious disease from it is low. I won't freak out, but I will say no.
These decisions need to be automatic and fairly consistent. You don't want to make a well reasoned analytical decision when your toddler has picked up a dog turd and is aiming it toward their mouth. You need to freak out, just a bit, enough to get them to drop it and freak out themselves, just a bit. You need to do that every time, so that they eventually see dog turds and their primitive reptilian brain starts to associate dog turds with a mildly exploding dad. This is learning at it's finest.

A row of chew toys.

Which brings me to the airport. It's so so hard to keep a toddler entertained between the time you get through security and the time you board the plane. They want to move. They want to try running and fall on their faces in front of strangers who stare horrified at the sight of a toddler getting carpet burn right next to their carry on. They have no idea that everything isn't theirs. Everyone's luggage, food, and clothing is a potential for grabbing and exploration. Other kids toys are, well, toys. Toys are awesome and should be grabbed and played with, regardless of ownership. And the chairs, oh the chairs. When you're a toddler, it's like a never ending jungle gym. You can climb over them and under them and run around them and go from seat to seat and fall off of them in so many creative ways. As a parent you know that burning off this energy is good. Any energy burned off now means less available on the plane, but other passengers tend to give you looks suggesting that you have no control over your wild children. They don't understand that these acrobatics are actually for their benefit. You're tying to help them when your toddler does a double back flip onto their laptop bag. Really! And the armrests, they're at just the right height, and are just the right texture for licking chewing and slobbering upon. Armrests fall into the 'don't but you're not going to die' category. It's worthy of a 'don't do that', but not worthy of an 'OHMYGODSTOPTHAT!'. With a ratio of two adults to one child, the seating area still ends up looking like the previous round of passengers were all letting their pet snails out for a walk before the flight.
Even with all of that, I was a bit jealous of those parents that had babies and toddlers on the flights that I was on. When you're flying with kids you're not worried so much about petty things like the plane leaving on time and whether or not they will have a beverage service. You're much more concerned about surviving the flight and what diseases your child is going to come down with in the next week from licking the armrests.  Those were the days.