AITA for reporting a mother and her glitter monster to a flight attendant?
I had a situation that happened to me on a long-haul flight yesterday and I need your verdict.
I'd paid for an aisle seat in main cabin extra because of my long legs. It was a packed flight and my row-mates were a mother (late 30s?) with a young child (maybe 5 or 6). They brought a bunch of arts and crafts to keep the kid busy - things like a glue stick, markers, paper, craft sticks. Sounds cute, right? Well, not when the glitter came out.
The child, let's call her Glitter Godzilla (GG), was making a mess, and since she was in the middle seat, the glitter would spill over onto my side. If you remember glitter from elementary school, it’s messy AF if you try attaching it to paper. There’s a lot of shake off and most of it doesn’t stick.
So yeah the glitter and marks from the glue stick rolling off the gray table was everywhere - on my shoes, my backpack, and my jeans.
I'm patient and get kids can be messy, but this felt crazy. I tried catching the mom's eye, hoping she'd step in. But she just gave me a blank look like "this is how it is."
I’m not confrontational so when I got up to use the bathroom, I quietly shared the situation with a flight attendant. She promised to discretely address it.
When I got back to my seat, the mother was pissed. Idk what the flight attendant said but the mom claimed I was being discriminatory against mothers, and since the flight was delayed she was just trying to keep her child entertained. Then she started raising her voice, accusing me of being "a selfish man with no understanding of children". All this despite the fact that my lower half now looks bedazzled.
There were no other seats available, so I was stuck the rest of the flight with this lady’s verbal attacks. The flight attendants gave me looks of sympathy but didn’t want to step in. Of course the mother gave me a final fuck you as we deplaned.
I travel a lot and this was the flight from hell. Not to mention it was pretty embarrassing in the airport. Not that I can blame people taking notice.
AITA here? Was I wrong to get some help in dealing with what felt like a glitter assault? Should I have just sucked it up and became a human art project?
How would you respond to this OP? Who is the AH?
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