Thread by @agentbizzle

HERE IS THE STORY of the most embarrassed I’ve ever been on an airplane. This only happened a few days ago and I’m still cringing at my own stupidity. It's also pretty funny, so I'm sharing it with you all.

So here goes.

THREAD!

I’ve been a father for 8 months. It’s great! I really love it. I fly often for work but my wife and I wanted to wait awhile before we took our daughter on a cross country flight to meet our extended families because babies on airplanes aren’t easy for anybody.

We checked our mountain of luggage (portable crib, stroller, suitcases) and boarded the plane and gave our daughter a bottle while the plane took off so her ears wouldn’t pop. We had toys and bottles and tons of stuff to keep her occupied. We were confident. First mistake.

Literally the second we took off, we heard the most horrible noise: my daughter took the loudest, most abrupt, and most instantly stench inducing shit. It sounded like somebody shot a paintball gun full of mashed potatoes at a cold metal wall.

We gasped. My daughter laughed. We knew her diaper had to be changed ASAP before it became a public horror. It smelled AWFUL. She’s been eating solid foods so her body is like a tiny pressure cooker for eggs, spinach & peas. I grabbed her diaper bag and rushed down the aisle.

Plane bathrooms are bad enough alone. With a wiggling, laughing baby with a diaper full of wet garbage, they become a frantic, claustrophobic Double Dare obstacle course. I lowered the changing table, cleaned the station with antibacterial wipes, and put down her changing mat.

She grabbed anything in reach, rolling around, giggling at my frenetic discomfort in the mirror. I changed the comically full diaper - the worst diaper I’ve seen yet - and in a blink of idiocy and chaos, threw it in the airplane bathroom toilet and hit the giant FLUSH button.

I cleaned her & the changing station and carried her back to our seats, shaking my head at how absurd it was to have successfully changed my first in-flight shit diaper. Then it hit me: OH NO I was definitely NOT supposed to flush that huge shitty diaper down the airplane toilet.

Suddenly, a short, elderly woman with small glasses and a turned up nose appeared in the aisle next to my seat. She looked like a character in a 1990’s kid's cereal commercial that hated kid's cereal. She tapped my shoulder and said “Excuse me, did you just use the bathroom?”

No good conversation has ever started with that sentence. Nobody in history has ever asked that question and followed it with something positive like “I just wanted to say thanks!” or “It smells amazing now!” or “It looks better than before you got there, great work!” Always bad.

“Yes?” I mumbled back. “Why?” I knew why. Her voice immediately escalated loud enough for 15 rows in both directions of a crowded plane to hear:

“BECAUSE YOU FLUSHED A DIAPER DOWN THE TOILET AND BROKE THE TOILET SO NOW WE ONLY HAVE ONE WORKING TOILET FOR THE ENTIRE PLANE TO USE"

My skeleton instantly turned into tiny snakes. I sank in to my seat. She kept yelling. “I JUST WANT YOU TO KNOW THAT YOU’RE NOT SUPPOSED TO FLUSH DIAPERS DOWN THE TOILET ON AN AIRPLANE BECAUSE YOU’LL BREAK THE TOILET FOR EVERYONE. IT'S A 5 HOUR FLIGHT AND NOW THERE'S A LONG LINE"

I apologized profusely to the upset woman in a mumbled, whispered tone as to hopefully reign in the confrontation and deflate her decibel levels to just our immediate vicinity. She scurried away. My wife gave me the most shocked, disappointed look. I buried my head in my hands.

“You didn’t know not to do that? You NEVER do that!” she said. I instantly shot back. “I thought you could flush anything down those things! They’re industrial! They inhale like 300 shits a day and turn them into ice blocks!"

I have no idea how airplane toilets work.

I looked back and saw 3 flight attendants staring into the open, broken bathroom like homicide detectives at a crime scene. I wanted to get pulled through a tiny airplane window like that white alien at the end of Alien Resurrection. I was mortified. We still had five hours left.

My wife and I were now full on laughing. A few minutes went by and a friendly stewardess appeared near me. “Hi! Just wanted you to know the bathroom works now. In the future, try not to put diapers in there!” I apologized & told her it wouldn't happen again.

HUGE SIGH OF RELIEF

THE MORAL OF THE STORY IS do not flush heavy, shitty diapers down airplane toilets, even if it looks and sounds like a dimensional portal to hell. Don’t ever flush any diaper down any toilet, really. You probably already knew this. I didn’t know this. Now I know this. DON'T DO IT

Big apologies to everyone on my flight. Thank you for putting up with my stupidity. And thank you to the kind @AlaskaAir flight attendants for pulling a shitty wet diaper out of an airplane toilet mid-flight so everyone else could poop in the toilet. Anyway, thanks for reading ❤️